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All Occupy San Diego Media

See also:

Media posted to daily email blasts

After each email blast is sent, we will copy the new media for the day to this topic so all past media can be reviewed in one place.

The items in this section may be redundant with media in the list below.

End of section pasted in from parent page.

2011 Nov 24

2011 Nov 25

  • NBS video regarding OSD protest and Municipal Code San Diego police cleared the tents here in Civic Center Plaza in October, but it wasn't without arrests or confrontation. But why? What's the law? - Discussion about homeless at the Navy Broadway complex camping and shelters.

  • Thousands of N.J. police officers, firefighters protest at Statehouse over potential benefits cuts March 04, 2011. 6,500 police and firefighters descended on the Statehouse... Police and firefighters said they’ve been hamstrung by layoffs in the last year, and warned they would retaliate on election day if the government cut into their benefits and pensions outside the bargaining table.
    Union leaders and Democratic lawmakers took turns blasting Christie, saying public safety workers are being unfairly blamed for problems caused by bankers and CEOs.
    (Wait a minute! Isn't that one of the reasons OWS is protesting?!)

  • OWS Participants - Your Rights Under Federal Law if You are Pepper Sprayed & Why You Should Sue Federal law, 42 United States Code Section 1983
    § 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights
    Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

  • Occupy L.A. protesters brace for eviction next weekLA protesters were warned on Wednesday they face certain eviction from their City Hall campground next week after talks on a voluntary relocation deal collapsed, their representatives said.
    Teddy Davis, a spokesman for Villaraigosa, said no formal deal like the one described by Lafferty (Attorney for Occupy LA) had been extended.
    "There has been some mischaracterization about what they were offered," Davis said. "There has just been sort of ongoing discussions." Asked if he meant that there was never a formal offer made, Davis replied: "Exactly."
    Lafferty accused the city of wavering in its negotiations.

2011 Nov 26

  • Off-duty police pepper spray NC shoppers
  • Occupy LA videos of City Liason Meeting with Deputy Mayor Matt Szabo 11-23-11
  • http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-14/wall_street/30278436_1_election-day-congressional-districts-executive-committee
  • Retired NY Supreme Court Justice Karen Smith Roughed up by Cops for Intervening in Brutal Beating of ‘Occupy’ Protester’s Momshe was working as a legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild, immediately identifiable as such by her day-glo neon green hat, when she witnessed a shocking incident of police brutality.
    “I walk over and I say, ‘Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ He said, ‘lady, you want to get arrested?’ I said, ‘Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer.’ He said, ‘Do you want to get arrested?’ and he pushed me up against the wall.”
    And chillingly, journalists have also been targeted for beatings and arrest for nothing more than doing their jobs. NYPD officers told reporters that “you’re not press tonight” as they roughed up and arrested employees of NPR, the New York Times, the New York Post, NBC and other outlets big and small after the powers-that-be decided to black out media access to the Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square eviction site.
  • The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
    Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.
  • Boycott "Black Friday", Solidarity with Striking Chinese Workers!This Black Friday, as millions of Americans scramble to find the "best deals" on consumer goods, thousands of Chinese manufacturing workers are striking to demand livable wages, job security, and other basic rights. In Huangjiang alone, 8,000 striking shoe factory workers took the streets Thursday, blocking roads and standing down lines of riot police
  • list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting AmericaThese are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers.

2011 Nov 27

  • The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competition with private companies. But this has changed thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), its Prison Industries Act, and a little-known federal program known as PIE (the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program).
    Somewhat more familiar is ALEC’s instrumental role in the explosion of the US prison population in the past few decades. ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states. (Then State Rep. Scott Walker was an ALEC member when he sponsored Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing laws and, according to PR Watch, used its statistics to make the case for the law.)

  • U.S. Conference of Mayors' Occupy Wall Street questionnaire Mayor Jerry Sanders did not participate in conference calls with other mayors to share information about the local spin-offs of the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, he did receive an email asking him to share information regarding Occupy San Diego on an online survey—and we have obtained the email through the California Public Records Act.

  • 451 at Zuccotti ParkThe books at Zuccotti Park were hauled away in dumpsters belonging to the sanitation department. The pretext of the destruction was “cleaning” the park which, the Mayor said, was filled with “filth”. This is the rhetoric of Mein Kampf. But no one is deceived. These acts are deliberate attempts to destroy the ideas

  • Survey: Americans Will Pull $185 Billion Out of Big Banks Next YearThe four biggest banks — Chase, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo — stand to lose the lion’s share of that $185 billion. According to the survey, they’re on track to lose $135 billion in customer deposits if they can’t find a way to woo new customers and keep existing ones from defecting.

  • A Fix For Banks Too Big To Fail: Cut 'Em Down To Size - March 26, 2010 "The 1994 Riegle-Neil Act says that no bank can have more than 10 percent of total retail deposits in the country. That's exactly the right kind of idea," Johnson says. "The problem is, since 1994 most of the action in terms of the bank growth has not been in retail deposits; its been in so called wholesale financing. So you want to cap size of banks in terms of their total liabilities and their total assets."

2011 Nov 28

  • Occupy L.A. speaks -- and says protesters aren't leaving In their first official statement to the city of Los Angeles, Occupy Los Angeles protesters rejected a purported city proposal offering work space and land away from City Hall –- and vowed to stay camped out on the building's lawn until their grievances are addressed.

  • OSD Press Release Tents are going back up in San Diego Civic Center Plaza Monday November 28

  • Keiser Report: Unemploy Wall Street This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss unemployed Wall Streeters looking for financial firms that practice 'integrity and honesty' and hedge fund managers crying 'boohoo' that JP Morgan has seized their MF Global funds. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Danny Schechter about plunder, the crime of our time, inspiring an economic justice movement. Most enjoyable.

2011 Nov 29

  • Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.

  • Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B Banks worldwide earned an estimated $13 BILLION by taking advantage of below-market rates on emergency U.S. Federal Reserve loans from August 2007 through April 2010. More extensive details in article.

  • Predictions of an economic collapse in China Not long ago, those who predicted that China's economy was headed for a fall were in a lonely place.
    U.S. economist Nouriel Roubini, widely praised for calling the U.S. housing meltdown, was dismissed as a serial contrarian when it came to his pessimistic China views.

  • Occupy SD showdown doesn't get tents Shortly after 5 p.m., three dozen protesters marched into Civic Center Plaza, many holding small tents the size of handkerchiefs over their heads, chanting, "We are the 99 percent."

2011 Nov 30

  • Raw video of Ray Lutz being arrested at Freedom Square (San Diego Civic Center Plaza) on Tuesday, November 29 after setting up a voter registration table.

2011 Dec 01

  • Fashion Valley Mall vs. National Labor Relations We hold that the right to free speech granted by article I, section 2 of the California Constitution includes the right to urge customers in a shopping mall to boycott one of the stores in the mall

  • Occupy L.A.: More than 200 arrested in peaceful sweepAfter they entered, a man who refused to leave told an officer: "If you give me a hug, I will leave right now."
    "Are you serious?" the officer asked with a smile. He appeared for a moment ready to comply, but then moved away.

  • Bloomberg: 'I have my own army' Call it martial law or call it a police state. Either one you chose isn’t too far off and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg knows it. At a speaking engagement Tuesday night, Bloomberg referred to the NYPD as his own army.

  • EXCLUSIVE: Senator’s husband’s firm cashes in on crisis , Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms. (Richard Blum owns the building at the Civic Center plaza in San Diego)

  • Churches help Occupy movement survive crackdowns, winter Soon after police forcibly evicted the original Occupy Wall Street camp in New York’s Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15, many of the protesters began sleeping and gathering in local congregations, including Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village.

  • Jerry Brown to Agency that Trains Cops: Hold the Pepper California Governor Jerry Brown has ordered the state agency that trains police officers to review their guidelines concerning the use of pepper spray against peaceful protesters. His basic message is, "You know that Bill of Rights thing, the foundation of our entire legal system? Do you remember how it begins?"

  • Interpreting The Constitution In The Digital Era Details how technological changes that were unimaginable at the time of the Founding Fathers are challenging our notions of things like personal vs. private space, freedom of speech and our own individual autonomy

  • Ann Coulter Advocates Shooting Occupy Protesters Not everyone agrees with the Occupy Wall Street movement, nor do they have to. Many might not even sympathize with the protesters when they are shot with tear gas cannisters, beaten with nightsticks, or sprayed with pepper spray. But it takes a special breed of *sshole to publicly wish for a repeat of the Kent State shootings. As it turns out, Ann Coulter is that kind of *sshole.

  • LA Police Arrest 200 Occupy Protesters Police used a cherry picker to pluck five men from trees. Two others were in a tree house - one wore a crown and another taunted police with an American flag.

2011 Dec 02

  • Occupy SF faces deadline to pack up tents Occupy San Francisco members are bracing for a possible raid after city officials told them they had to pack up their tents in the financial district and move to a new site provided by the city by Thursday.

  • Fed bailing out the Euro A surprising (if you don't want to say secretive) meeting of the world's most influential central bankers produced even more surprising results. The US Central bank – the Federal Reserve – promised the cash-strained European Central bank a practically unlimited amount of American taxpayer money for cheap, effectively bailing out the Euro.

2011 Dec 03

  • [[http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/254139/20111122/house-democrat-introduces-occupied-constitutional-amendment-ban.htm][House Democrat Introduces Occupied constitutional Amendment to Ban Corporate Money in Politics.

  • America's Next TARP Model Bloomberg report reveals that the U.S. government loaned banks $7.7 trillion in secret bailout funds at no interest and then borrowed the money back at interest.

  • Judge Stays Occupy Boston Eviction Until December 15 At a court-ordered hearing between the City of Boston and the members of Occupy Boston’s Dewey Square encampment, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frances A. Mc Intyre decided to keep a restraining order in place until December 15 preventing an eviction of the nation’s longest-running occupation.

  • Cain: I helped a friend in need Herman Cain met with New Hampshire's Union Leader Paper and talked in depth about allegations of a 13-year affair. (Starts out "she was out of work." - Wait a minute. Didn't he tell Occupy Wall Street to get a job?! Why doesn't he tell his "friend" to get a job?!)

  • Kucinich bill seeks to end the Federal Reserve The National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act of 2011 would place the Federal Reserve, a private, qusai-governmental institution that controls the nation’s monetary policy, under control of the U.S. Treasury. It would also implement new rules for the financial industry, in hopes of ending the worst abuses that created the 2008 financial collapse and the ensuing recession.

  • Lou Reed Occupies Wall Street Lou Reed, along with a number of other artists and musicians, took center stage yesterday at the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in New York City.

2011 Dec 04

  • U.N. Envoy: U.S. Isn't Protecting Occupy Protesters' Rights "One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order -- but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."

  • Occupy UC Davis protesters adopt resolution calling for break with Democratic Party On Tuesday evening, the general assembly of Occupy UC Davis passed a resolution denouncing the attack on UC Davis students and calling for a break with the Democratic Party and construction of an independent social and political movement of the entire working class.
    The attack on UC Davis students is part of a nationwide crackdown on Occupy demonstrators, organized by both Democrats and Republicans and overseen by the Obama administration

2011 Dec 05

  • Occupy Congress on Jan. 17: ‘Largest Occupy protest ever’ The protest is being timed with the start of the 2012 legislative session for Congress. Protesters say they hope to set up 1 million tents in front of the Capitol. “We’re taking the movement straight to their doorstep,” the protest’s Facebook page wrote.

  • $7.7 Trillion to Wall Street - Anything to Keep the Banksters Happy! Do you know who Elizabeth Duke is? How about Donald Kohn or Kevin Warsh? No? Well - you should. Because while Congress was debating back in 2008 whether or not to bailout banksters with a $700 billion blank check - these guys and girls were just doing it. They were funneling $7.7 trillion to Wall Street under the table

  • Invitation to the National General Assembly 7-4-12 We are asking all of the Demands Working Group in all of the GA's around the country to submit a list of grievances or demands to the National General Assembly delegates at the end of March 2012. We are asking all of the Demands Working Group in all of the GA's around the country to submit a list of grievances or demands to the National General Assembly delegates at the end of March 2012. The 22 points we list at www.the99declaration.org are only suggestions.

  • Just baton them! Recipes of democracy from USA It turns out that nearly half of all Americans want the change and are against the omnipotence of the corporations and tycoons. But the White House, the Capitol and city halls of the American cities prefer to ignore this. Preservation of the foundations of American capitalism is more important than democracy, and no one is allowed to undermine it. Those who try will be treated with batons in their face or tear gas.
    This is the lesson in democracy from "the most democratic country in the world".

2011 Dec 06

  • [Los Angeles Stands Up To The Supreme Court, Looks To Revoke Corporate Personhood Billions of corporate dollars have poured into the 2012 Election, all thanks to the Citizens United decision by the conservative members of the Supreme Court. Towns and counties across the country have proposed or passed resolutions against corporate personhood, the most recent of which is Missoula, Montana. But now a major city in America looks to do the same next week.

  • Alan Grayson on GAO Report on the Fed For the first 96 years of the Fed’s existence, the Fed’s primary market activities were to buy or sell U.S. Treasury bonds (to change the money supply), and to lend at the “discount window.” Neither of these activities permitted the Fed to play favorites. But the programs that the GAO audited are fundamentally different. They allowed the Fed to choose winners and losers. I’ve called the GAO report a bailout autopsy. But it’s an autopsy of the undead.

  • Texas Senators Vote to Legalize Sex with Animals in National Defense Authorization Act The National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision to repeal Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). It states: "(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense. (b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

  • Police raid Occupy Boston and arrest…the sink?] The city and the police have been on our case for weeks. We’re supposedly unclean. Our dishes are not getting clean enough. So, somebody figured they’d get us a new sink. But the police ARRESTED OUR SINK. They literally took it from us by force, threw it in the back of a prisoner wagon, and sped away.

  • InterOccupy.org provides channels of communications between GAs, Work Groups and Occupiers across the Occupy movement. We are currently hosting several weekly conference calls that connect occupiers with shared interests. Our General Call is every Monday night.

  • Zuccotti Park owners Brookfield Properties owe city $139G in back taxes The city Finance Department says park owner Brookfield Properties and its parent company, Brookfield US Corp., currently owe the city more than $139,000 in unpaid business taxes from 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
    Brookfield is among 40,000 entities that owe the city an eye-popping $149 million in overdue business taxes dating to 2000, the Finance Department says.

  • Freeze Flash Mob & Police Brutality - Don't Buy War Code Pink Austin, along with allies from Veteran's for Peace and Women in Black staged a Don't Buy War "freeze" at Barton Creek Mall on Saturday, December 3rd. All was peaceful until mall security and APD arrived, and an APD officer brutally attacked a young woman who had joined the group spontaneously

2011 Dec 07

  • [[http://www.news.com.au/national/police-criticised-after-tent-dress-torn-off-occupy-protester/story-e6frfkvr-1226215162454][Police criticised after tent dress torn off Occupy protester

  • U.S. is among developed economies with highest income inequality Although the gap between the highest and lowest paid is greater in the United States than in most other wealthy countries, income inequality has risen faster in others such as Sweden and Finland, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

  • Prosecuting Wall Street Two whistleblowers offer a rare window into the root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown

2011 Dec 08

  • 1st Circuit Rules Public Has Right to Videotape Police In a resounding affirmation of the First Amendment, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that members of the public have a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public.

  • The Media's Blackout Of The National Defense Authorization Act Is Shameful The broadcast media's ignorance and unwillingness to cover the National Defense Authorization Act, a radical piece of legislation which outrageously redefines the US homeland as a "battlefield" and makes US citizens subject to military apprehension and detainment for life without access to a trial or attorney, is unacceptable.

  • FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Locations and Executive Orders There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they mostly empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.

  • San Francisco Police Unexpectedly Raid Occupy San Francisco In an unexpected move last night, the San Francisco Police Department raided the Occupy San Francisco encampment at around 2 a.m. The police dismantled over 100 tents. One protester said police only gave them five minutes notice to clear out of the plaza they had been encamped in. “That left no time to get personal objects,” he said. At this time it is unclear how many people have been arrested, if any,

2011 Dec 09

  • Bilbray wants four debates before primary Rep. Brian Bilbray urged his challengers to consent to four debates before the June primary election, saying the forums would give residents in the new congressional district the opportunity to learn more about the candidates’ views and experiences.

  • JP Morgan-Chase Mic-Checked at Princeton University Occupy Princeton (www.occupyprinceton.net) students mic-check a JP Morgan-Chase Treasury Services info session on December 7, 2011. This is the first direct action taken up by Occupy Princeton - more to come. Full Script in link.

2011 Dec 10

  • The Winter of Our Occupation And now it is winter. Wall Street rejoices, hoping that the change of seasons will mean a change in our spirit, our commitment to stop them.

  • Pentagon provides military grade weapons to local police Local law enforcement has been getting assistance from the Pentagon. The recent militarization of the police at the Occupy protests has proved this true. The Pentagon program is getting military-grade weapons in the hands of local law enforcement in the US to use on American citizens.

  • Organizing for the port shutdown Lee Sustar challenges the assertion that the Occupy movement is trying to impose a shutdown of West Coast docks without support from port workers. SSA Marine, the port terminal operator owned by Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs

  • Ways to support real job creators A series of Kauffman Foundation studies find that nearly all job growth in the United States comes from entrepreneurial startups, which by their nature are products of Main Street.

  • Ten Steps To Close Down an Open Society It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

  • Thousands Rally to Defend Occupy Movement They came by bus from New York and DC. They carpooled from Providence and flew in from Chicago. They drove from Worcester, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Last night, demonstrating how clearly Occupy Boston’s message has been heard and understood, two thousand people traveled from near and far to defend Dewey Square

2011 Dec 11

  • Just What Do The Rich Have That's Taxable? The richest of us, billionaires, derive the bulk of their wealth from stock appreciation. Their income strategies often reap hundreds of millions of dollars from those valuable shares in ways the IRS doesn't always classify as taxable income.

  • Occupy Vacant Lots – off to a start! A group that initially met at Occupy Philly on October 25th to discuss a Direct Action around composting on Dilworth Plaza, has now morphed into a much larger group focused on, to put it simply: Occupy Vacant Lots.

  • A Longshoreman Speaks: "I Fully Support Port Shutdown" I asked him if other longshoremen supported the action and he grinned and said:
    Yes, absolutely. Longshoremen have a long proud history of radical activism and honoring community picket lines, much like the anti-apartheid pickets at ports in the 1980s.

  • Now it's 'Occupy foreclosed homes' Neighbors said the house on Vermont Street in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood had been vacant for years. Three years ago the now-defunct predatory lending bank Countrywide refused to renegotiate the ballooning interest rate on a mortgage filled with hidden clauses and traps. Instead, Countrywide sold the mortgage to Bank of America, which, in turn, initiated foreclosure proceedings. In the East New York neighborhood, one of the poorest parts of the United States, more than 16 per 1,000 homes are in foreclosure, the highest rate in New York City and one of the highest nationwide.

  • Occupy Protesters Free Speech Class Journalist Yasha Levine reported on the outrageous treatment of protesters arrested at Occupy Los Angeles, including being forced to take 'free speech' courses (Re-education classes)

  • BANKING HISTORY TIMELINE - FOLLOW THE MONEY Elite banking families – including the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, and Morgans – have gained control of the global economy through the central banking system. They set up the Federal Reserve in the US in 1913 and have been manipulating the market to benefit themselves ever since. This timeline shows the pattern of American Presidents being assassinated after challenging central bankers and their monopoly on money, and the Federal Reserve’s artificial creation of booms and busts that causes people to lose their jobs, homes, and retirements, while the bankers further consolidate wealth and control.

2011 Dec 12

  • Change For A Dollar Is he asking for Change, or is he asking for CHANGE? Follow a man as he affects multiple peoples' lives with just one dollar, proving that it doesn't take much to be the change in someone's life.

  • Children of OWS post paper hearts, cops rip them down An anti-bullying march by parents and children directed against the New York Police Department’s arrests of peaceful protesters encountered a first-hand taste of what they were protesting against when police ripped down the paper hearts the children were attempting to post at City Hall.

  • Tokyo General Union Supports West Coast Port Shutdown Tokyo General Union supports the upcoming West Coast Port Shutdown and the Occupy Movement. We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters taking such a courageous action to end this system that brings untold riches to the 1% at the expense of the 99%

2011 Dec 13

Occupy San Diego Media

  • Occupy Organizes, Targets Ports The action is part of a wider protest across the West Coast aimed at creating a blockade at key U.S. ports from Anchorage to San Diego

  • 5 'Occupy' protesters arrested at port Five people were arrested Monday when several dozen Occupy San Diego protesters tried to blockade the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal Monday as part of a series of efforts to shut down commercial ports on the West Coast.

Occupy National and Global

  • Goldman Sachs Top Target of Occupy Protests at West Coast Ports Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth- biggest U.S. bank by assets, is a major target of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who plan to blockade ports from Anchorage to San Diego to cut into profits of the company they blame for helping spur the financial crisis.

  • An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible

  • Occupy The World Financial Center-12/12/11 The morning of December 12th, 2011 will not be one I will be forgetting anytime soon. Many violent arrests inside the World Financial Center including my friend Al Burgo getting arrested minutes after having a chat with him and other protesters being slammed on the ground...people have to wake up, we are in trouble...our generation has a responsibility and a duty to make up for what our parents and their parents failed to accomplish and we need to make up for it quick...REVOLUTION

  • 'US feds attacking local Occupy groups' Press TV has conducted an interview with Sara Flounders, Occupy Wall Street, to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcript of the interview.

2011 Dec 14

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Monday, Dec. 12, 2011 - Evening Edition Occupy San Diego protesters joined a movement up and down the West Coast to attempt to block the ports, plus a Little Italy development hits a snag, and more on Monday's show.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • How Congress is Signing its own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest bill never thought I would have to write this: but, incredibly, shortly Congress is decide if the proposed National Defense Appropriations Act will pass, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens in an amendment so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due processown-arrest-warrants-in-the-ndaa-citizen-arrest-bill/]]

  • An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
    We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story

  • Support the RESTORE the American Dream for the 99% This bill is based on the Contract for the American Dream, a real, workable plan to fix our broken economy. It creates 5 million new jobs in two years, responsibly ends the wars and cuts military waste, adds a public option to the Affordable Care Act, raises new taxes from millionaires and Wall Street, and much more.

  • Lowe's to close store in blow to Denver's Alameda Square Taxpayers on the hook after Lowe's pulls the plug after just being opened for 19 months. The project was backed by the Denver Urban Renewal Authority, which agreed to reimburse Brighton up to $7.3 million from sales and property taxes generated at Alameda Square.

  • Buy American to Build and Defend America Two common sense pieces of legislation, The Invest in American Jobs Act of 2011 (HR 3533) and The Berry Amendment Extension Act (HR 679), make certain that we Buy American when we use tax dollars to build and defend the USA.

2011 Dec 15

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy San Diego Mic Checks the San Diego Port Commissioner Board Meeting on 12/13/11 -- This was somewhat effective but I still think engaging in the meeting is the way to go. At this meeting, they approved an expansion to the Marriott Hotel (owned by Host, Inc.) which will complete a "wall" to separate the 99% in the city from the harbor while these corporate entities profit from having nearly sole access to the harbor. Approved, of course by the unelected Port Commission who have very little respect for any comments brought in from the public.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Police Use Flash Grenades To Reopen Seattle Terminal Police in Seattle arrested more than a dozen Occupy protesters Monday night after marchers briefly blocked traffic coming into the city's busy port. The Seattle protest was the culmination of a day of coordinated protests at ports up and down the West Coast.

  • Occupy Oakland Tests Labor Leaders Occupy Oakland has cast itself as the true champion of America’s workers. But the Occupy planners also knew that they had chosen a target that was symbolic of multinational corporations, including the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which owns a major interest in a company that operates many port terminals.

  • Moyers: Why 'We The People' Must Triumph Over Corporate Power Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five conservative members of the Supreme Court handed for-profit corporations the right to secretly flood political campaigns with tidal waves of cash on the eve of an election, they moved America closer to outright plutocracy

  • The Top 10 Films that Explain Why Occupy Wall St. Exists One of the most entertaining yet unsurprising aspects of Occupy Wall St has been the response from traditional media. Whether intentionally playing dumb or genuinely clueless, the mainstream media has failed to inform the public and substantially address the key issues. But why are tens of thousands of people risking arrest all over the world, setting up encampments and protesting the status quo?

2011 Dec 16

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • January 20, 2012 – Move to Amend Occupies the Courts! Americans across the country are on the march, and they are marching OUR way. They carry signs that say, “Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!” And they are chanting those truths at the top of their lungs! The time has come to make these truths evident to the courts.

  • False NDAA Rumors Spread Through Social Networks…Obama Did NOT Sign The Bill The act, in various forms, is passed every year by Congress and then signed by the President. It includes budgets and various other policy specifics. The 2012 version, however, includes a serious intrusion on our civil rights. It will authorize the military and other law enforcement officials, under the guise of fighting “the War on Terror,” to indefinitely detain American citizens.
    Here is the press release, outlining the changes, including changes to the detainee portion. One specific change reads as follows: Require military detention – subject to a Presidential waiver – for foreign al Qaeda terrorists who attack the United States. This provision specifically exempts United States citizens and lawful resident aliens.

  • House passes NDAA, White House backs off veto threats The Constitution and Bill of Rights have meant little to Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations. Sadly, what little in the way of protected civil liberties were essentially cast aside last night. Our Founding Fathers are no doubt spinning in their graves.

  • Occupy Denver at 10am, 12/15/2011 The police are going to raid Occupy Denver on Thursday 12/15/2011 from 10am-2pm. In defiance, Occupy Denver builds permanent structures which may be harder to destroy. Please join us and defend these houses.

2011 Dec 17

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  • Why main street supports Occupy Wall Street: Scenes from Vanguard In this scene from "The 99 Percent," Lauderdale County resident and U.S. Navy veteran Fetzer Mills gives Vanguard correspondent Christof Putzel a tour of the town he grew up in. What they find is a small American town that has been ravaged by the economic downturn. Fetzer explains why he has joined the Occupy Wall Street movement, and why his neighbors support him.

2011 Dec 18

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2011 Dec 19

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  • Occupied San Diego video footage. "Eating the crumbs off the big piece of the pie they have taken"

  • Women Occupy San Diego sings protest carols at shopping malls The group, calling itself Women Occupy San Diego, is singing parodies of Christmas carols stressing the message that financial barons have rigged the game against 99% of Americans. Included in the medley: "Jingle Bills, Jingle Coins," "O Little Town of Occupy" and "You Better Watch Out, Occupy Is Here in Your Town."

  • Women of Occupy San Diego Bring Occu-carols to Mission Valley The all-volunteer group Women Occupy San Diego will sing altered holiday carols and answer questions shoppers may have about the reasons for supporting the goals of the Occupy movement. They will begin on the north side of the mall near Nordstrom Rack.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Rocky Anderson: Obama 'Completely betrayed his base' The launch of the Justice Party was just held on December 12th here in Washington DC, with Rocky Anderson at the helm, planning to make a bid for the Presidency. He's said that he won't take more than $100 per person in donations and that this party is for the sake of justice, social justice, environmental justice, and economic justice. Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson joins the show.

  • Say Good Bye to the America You Knew, Obama Signed the Defense Bill Critical attention has been focused on the National Defense Authorization Act; a controversial provision allowing for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. Obama alluded to being willing to veto the bill, but instead, after revisions, he did the unthinkable, signing it into law, and as a result we no longer have our civil rights or the ability to challenge our government without fear of this reprisal.

  • Three myths about the detention bill it is very worthwhile to briefly examine — and debunk — the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill

  • There Goes the Neighborhood Cuyahoga County ripped down 1,000 homes this year. And they have 20,000 more to go. That'll cost about $150 million dollars. And all that's keeping other neighborhoods from the same fate are those 11 million underwater homeowners like Linda Bizzelle who stubbornly refuse to walk away.

2011 Dec 20

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Project Homeless Connect Amazing Homeless outreach opportunity called Project Homeless Connect here in San Diego January 11, 2012. It's an annual one-day resource fair, that provides health screenings, flu shots, dental exams, haircuts, drug counseling, legal aid, housing counseling and other services for San Diego’s homeless families, veterans, seniors and disabled

  • NDAA Sit-In Protest 12/19 @ SDCDP HQ MONDAY 12/19/11 EMERGENCY SIT-IN PROTEST @ 11:00AM SAN DIEGO COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY (SDCDP) HQ 8340 CLAIREMONT MESA BLVD - SAN DIEGANS TO SAVE THE BILL OF RIGHTS - FORCE OBAMA TO VETO THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT (NDAA) !!!

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy America Have the Occupy Wall Street protests that sprung up across the country this fall already passed? Shot in NYC, Oakland, and Cincinnati, this short explores the state of the #OWS protests now that local governments have removed permanent encampments, and asks what the future will be for this still-young nationwide movement.

  • Indefinite detention Act voids US Constitution Yesterday the US Congress voted to pass the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. The 86 to 13 vote will allow the indefinite detention and torture of American citizens at home and abroad without a trial. The NDAA gives more power to the military and government and President Obama at one point said would veto the bill but he has changed his mind.

  • Take Back the Commons - D17 | Occupy Wall Street Video December 17, 2011: Occupy Wall Street teams up with artists, musicians and faith leaders to demand a space for public expression and to seek sanctuary in an unused lot owned by Trinity Church, an institution that has shown support for the movement despite its strong ties to Wall Street. Episcopal Bishop George Packard is the first to scale the fence, and is arrested along with fellow occupiers. Reverend Lawson, a leader of the Civil Rights movement, urges the protesters to keep "treading water" because the country needs them. Music from Dean and Britta, live from WBAI studios

2011 Dec 21

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy San Diego Strikes Back - Day 1 of Occupy 2.0 (re-Occupation of Freedom Plaza This is an Occumentary filmed in San Diego at Freedom Plaza. It was started because the SDPD have grossly neglected the law in regards to their enforcement of the Illegal Lodging law, by arresting individuals without offering shelter beds. Please share this video everywhere so we can bring to light the unjust and unfair practices of the SDPD.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Business Relocation and Homegrown Jobs, 1992–2006 Relying on the most recent data, this analysis reconfirms that business relocation—the movement of business establishments from one state to another—accounts for a very small share of California’s employment fluctuations

  • Feinstein Introduces Due Process Guarantee Act The measure, entitled the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011, is an attempt by Feinstein and her co-sponsors to prevent American citizens detained under applicable provisions of the NDAA from being denied their constitutional right to the due process of law.

  • Meet Occupy Wall Street Sit in on an impromptu discussion among pro-democracy marchers at the Occupy Wall Street rally in New York CIty's Duarte Square Park on Dec. 17, 2011, and see for yourself what they're like.

  • Occupy protesters indicted on felony charges in Houston The decision comes nearly a week after a judge initially dismissed the charges, saying the protesters could not be charged with possessing or using a "criminal instrument" – a felony in Texas – for their use of PVC pipe. The protesters -- three from Austin, four from Houston -- put their arms through the pipe and used latches on it to connect together, making their arrest more difficult but not preventing it,

2011 Dec 22

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Field Team Protesting the Right to Organize @ West Coast Port Action Our field team, Jersey, Alfie & Holly, and volunteer activists, participated in the West Coast Port Action - organizing in solidarity with labor and workers first. This was a coordinated day across cities along the West Coast that move over $700 million in products daily. The ILWU in Washington and SSA. Protecting protesters' and workers' rights! Organizers protest at the San Diego port; in solidarity w/ longshoreman and truckers who's bargaining rights have been stripped away

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Crippling the Right to Organize UNLESS something changes in Washington, American workers will, on New Year’s Day, effectively lose their right to be represented by a union.

  • DOD Awards 23 Million Dollar Contract to NDAA Lobbyist According to reports from the Daily Kos and Russia Today, a company specializing in night raid equipment was awarded a 23 million dollar contract from the Department of Defense and subsequently went on to lobby for the NDAA which has given the government the power to indefinitely detain American citizens.

2011 Dec 23

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Raid and Arrests at Occupy San Diego December 22 At 12:05am on December 22 a team of San Diego Police Department Officers march into the plaza and make three arrests. Alan, Chris, and Daniel, all protesters at Occupy San Diego. Chris was choked and Daniel was stomped on by the police in the video.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Boehner’s office cuts off C-SPAN cameras as GOP takes verbal beating As Rep. Stenny Hoyer (D-MD) attempted to call for a vote to extend a payroll tax cut to middle class and working Americans, his Republican colleagues adjourned the House and walked out of the chamber. And if that weren’t odd enough, it got even stranger: As Hoyer railed against them for failing to help working Americans, footage from C-SPAN went silent, then cut away.

  • Venezuela launches energy help to poor Americans For the seventh consecutive year, Venezuela launches its energy assistance program for poor Americans during the winter season to pay for home heating oil, especially now that the U.S faces a severe economic crisis. Next year, more than 400,000 poor Americans will receive the aid.

2011 Dec 24

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • UC Riverside Study: 150 Occupy Camps in California Occupy protests have spread to nearly 150 locations equally distributed between Northern and Southern California. Researchers at UC Riverside used social media sites like Facebook to track the movement’s growth from large urban centers to remote mountain towns.

2011 Dec 25

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • SDPD: U.S. flagpole breaks law at Occupy Long said the municipal code provision, dubbed "Dangerous Weapons Used During Picketing, Demonstrations And Strikes," was added to minimize potential threats.

  • Occupy San Diego Demanding Fair Enforcement Standing up to SDPD Occupy San Diego stands up to SDPD against their selective enforcement. At 5:30am SDPD Police Chief William Lansdowne came through the plaza with two body guards. Shortly thereafter the police began harassing everyone at the plaza and telling them their belongings would be confiscated if not within arms reach. This video depicts OSD calling the Sgt. out on his selective enforcement.

  • Case of the Stolen Shopping Cart - Occupy San Diego On December 22, 2011 the San Diego Police Department in an attempt to intimidate the protesters away from the plaza, were issuing citations for just about anything. This video depicts an interview with an Occupier that was issued a citation for being in possession of a stolen shopping cart. The cart in question is the mobile protest cart that contained dozens of protest signs and was used by the entire group for the protest.

  • Case of the Stolen Shopping Cart - Occupy San Diego On December 22, 2011 the San Diego Police Department in an attempt to intimidate the protesters away from the plaza, were issuing citations for just about anything. This video depicts an interview with an Occupier that was issued a citation for being in possession of a stolen shopping cart. The cart in question is the mobile protest cart that contained dozens of protest signs and was used by the entire group for the protest.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • OccupyBoston Realizes They Were Wrong On December 17th, 2011, three months after the start of the #Occupy movement, Occupy Boston finally realized they had it all wrong. This is their march.

  • Occupy Wall Street Protesters Sue Over Free Speech, Use Of Force Most major Occupy encampments have been dispersed, but they live on in a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities' mass arrests and use of force to break up tent cities.

  • I See What Occupy Vancouver Did There...And It's Brilliant When an internal city memorandum stated that Occupy Vancouver had cost its city nearly a million dollars in taxpayer money, the organizers did something brilliant: they broke down the cost of what they were doing for the city of Vancouver.

2011 Dec 26

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • SDPD cite Marine veteran for carrying American flag At approximately 9:40 p.m., Dec. 22, members of the San Diego Police Department cited Iraq war veteran, Marine Lance Cpl. John Canter for carrying an American flag at Civic Center Plaza, home to the Occupy San Diego movement.

  • Christmas Eve Occupy San Diego - More Police Harassment As Occupy San Diego tries to celebrate Occupy Christmas at Freedom Plaza, they are harassed by the police in an attempt to disrupt the protest / celebration. This video depicts the events of the evening of December 24th, 2011.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Movies |UploadSearch The atmosphere at wall street is very tense with a lot of hostility towards banksters, wall street and police officers. Our mission in this video was to brighten the mood a little bit and bring humor to lighten the situation.

2011 Dec 27

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • COPS STEAL OSD BAGS dec 22 During the Occupy San Diego protest in Freedom Plaza (aka Civic Center) the San Diego police steal Occupiers bags right in front of them.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy The Holidays We partnered with the OWS Interfaith group Occupy Faith, the Yes Men and the Posterboy Collective to create this holiday video that documents the symbolic gift of a nativity scene to Trinity Church and inspires debate about the role of faith in social movements.

2011 Dec 28

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • "We are Farmers, We Grow Food for the People" On December 4, 2011, farmers and activists from across the country joined the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March for "a celebration of community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food." The Farmers March began at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardens where urban and rural farmers addressed an excited crowd about the growing problems in our industrial food system and the promise offered by solutions based in organic, sustainable and community based food and agricultural production. This was followed by a 3 mile march from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

  • How to Infiltrate and Destroy a Political Movement When we think of infiltrating and destroying a movement, we assume that means attempting to bring about the immediate end of the movement....The goal of the Corporate Government complex isn’t to erase that value, it is rather to capture that value.

  • Chomsky to Occupy: move to the next stage Noam Chomsky has advice for the Occupy movement, whose encampments all over the country are being swept away by police. The occupations were a "brilliant" idea, he says, but now it's time to "move on to the next stage" in tactics. He suggests political organizing in the neighborhoods.

2011 Dec 29

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Rigged Elections: A Call for the Second American Revolution in 2012 "Pay attention to the balance of power; watch it tipping ever further toward the corporatist/fascist side of the scale....Over the past 40 years ..election supervisors have literally sold our democratic system to to a small criminal cadre of extreme right-wing and religious ideologues who lurk behind shady voting machine companies. The top three are Diebold (purchased by ES&S in 2009), ES&S, and Sequoia Pacific (purchased by Dominion). They manufactured the majority of voting machines and software that secretly count our ballots."

  • NLG condemns NDAA provisions on indefinite detention After over a decade of the so-called “War on Terror,” President Barack Obama is about to sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. The NDAA permits the indefinite detention of anyone, including citizens of the United States.

  • The Children's General Assembly | Occupy Wall Street On December 10th in New York City, Parents for Occupy Wall Street and their kids led a demonstration against policemen who are bullies. In Union Square, the children held their own general assembly. They painted messages on five thousand paper hearts - one for every protester arrested nationwide since September 17th, 2011 - and marched to City Hall.

  • Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99% “I don’t want to say we’re making our own Facebook. But, we’re making our own Facebook,” said Ed Knutson, a web and mobile app developer who joined a team of activist-geeks redesigning social networking for the era of global protest.

2011 Dec 30

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • PHASE ONE: Occupy San Diego (October-November) This [very raw] Multimedia piece incorporates photography, ambient audio, and commentary to tell the story of the first two months of the Occupy movement in San Diego. This was created for an assignment for a Fall 2011 Photo Journalism class at Palomar College (San Marcos).

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Rewriting NYPD interference on OWS The New York Police Department has been obstructing reporters from covering the Occupy Wall Street protests. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has details in the Rewrite.

  • Occupy Wall Street Drone presentation 12-18-11 I shot this at the Netroots / Occupy conference at Pace University NYC on 12/18/11 It can be bought on line or in a good toy store for about $300. I has a rang of 50 meters and can fly for about a half hour depending on the type of battery. It has a forward looking camera and a downward looking one too.I found an article on it with more information.,http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-wall-street-gets-a-surveillan­ce-drone-the-occucopter-2011-12

2011 Dec 31

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Police Raid on General Assembly in San Diego Dec 29 During the daily scheduled General Assembly at Freedom Plaza, SDPD officers swarm the protesters involved in GA and make two arrests. GA disrupted police refuse to explain why. Protesters respond by reading the police the declaration of the occupation and resuming GA.

  • Pepper-Spray Officer Involved in Nine Lawsuits, Including $30,000 Settlement Anthony Bologna, the senior police officer who was videotaped using pepper spray on the eyes of protesters, was previously named in a lawsuit alleging police brutality at the 2004 protests of the Republican national convention. The Local has now acquired court documents, some of which are posted below, that show it is just one of nine lawsuits in which the officer is named, all of them alleging the violation of demonstrators’ constitutional rights.

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Jan 01

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Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Zuccotti Park Raid: John's Story On November 14th going into the 15th, 2011 the Occupy Wall Street encampment was raided by NYPD riot police. Several brave protesters locked arms and remained in the park, one of which was John Eustor. Here is his story.

2012 Jan 02

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2012 Jan 03

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • OCCUPATION 101: INTERVIEW WITH AN OCCUPIER On December 19, 2011, I sat down with Mike Garcia at Downtown Johnny Brown's at the Civic Center Plaza. Garcia is a La Mesa resident and Committee Member of Occupy San Diego (OSD).

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Protesters Occupy The Rose Parade Perhaps the most anticipated float of the 2012 Rose Parade is an unofficial entrant: a giant "Occupy Octopus" made out of plastic bags - Some great photos.

  • Occupy The Rose Parade preparation complete with rapping 'billionaire' Occupy the Rose Parade plans to descend upon the annual showcase of flowered floats and bands with a undetermined number of protesters. Pasadena police officials have said there could be between 200 and 1,000 protesters. However, Occupy hasn't released any firm numbers to this newspaper. The New York Times reported as many as 40,000 protesters

  • Citizens United Loses in Montana he Montana Supreme Court restored the state's century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations.

  • Rose Parade held with an 'Occupy' twist The 2012 Tournament of Roses brought its flowery floats and strutting bands to a worldwide audience Monday under clear blue skies, and in its wake came a scruffier parade — hundreds of anti-Wall Street protesters.

2012 Jan 04

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Declaration and Convention Chrystal Coleman - What's the deal with the 99% Declaration, and the Constitutional Convention thats planned for July 4th? Do we have volunteers for Delegates?

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • OCCUPY THE COURTS in 46 cities and counting!! Move to Amend (MTA) is excited to announce that both THOM HARTMANN and DR. CORNEL WEST have agreed to be featured speakers in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, in Washington, D.C, as part of MTA's national day of action - OCCUPY THE COURTS - 1.20.2012!

  • Wall Street - a raw deal for the 100 percent The stunning reality is that five years into the financial meltdown, it's business as usual on Wall Street - outlandish rewards for insiders with downside for almost everyone else.

  • Occupy protesters rally in NYC's Grand Central About a hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters rallied in New York City's Grand Central Station to call attention to a law signed by President Barack Obama that they say represses civil liberties...

  • Romney supporters tell Occupy protesters to ‘get a job!’ While speaking to to about 600 people in Clive, Romney was interrupted by protesters reportedly associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. “Mic check!” on protester yelled, followed by something about Romney’s corporate ties.

  • Shut Down the Corporations February 29, 2010 Leap into Action. Join us! Start organizing in your city and get your General Assembly to join this call to action. We will be working to both support and coordinate the action with conference calls, outreach materials and trainings. Please let us know by email web@shutdownthecorporations.org if your city will be participating so that we can add the details to the website!

2012 Jan 05

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy San Diego J3 'We're Still Here March' - NLG Legal Observer Detained On January 3rd, 2011 Occupy San Diego took to the streets for the J3 'We're Still Here March' and to stand in opposition to the National Defense Athorization Act which authorizes indefinite detention of US Citizens without trial. During the Protest an NLG Legal Observer along with 2 other protesters (Fish and William) were detained and ticketed by the SDPD. The protest regrouped after the police harassment and marched on their planned route

  • Free Speech San Diego ‎2012 is the 100-year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight, one of the most important moments in the history of the city of San Diego.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Faking It: How the Media Manipulate the World into War As the US and Iranian governments escalate tensions in the already volatile Straits of Hormuz, and China and Russia begin openly questioning Washington's interference in their internal politics, the world remains on a knife-edge of military tension.

  • #J3 #NDAA Grand Central Arrest #ows On January 3 2012 Occupy Wall St. protesters concluded a full day of action at New York's Grand Central Terminal for a flash mob. fter one woman repeatedly used the human-mic to read our statement to the people at the terminal, the police decided to silence our dissent by arresting this one woman.

  • Democracy Now! National and Global News Headlines for Wednesday, January 4, 2012 At minute 8:50 of the video: State legislators in California are introducing a measure today supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the controversial Supreme Court ruling that endowed corporations with the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens and characterizes political spending as free speech.

  • Obama Signs NDAA, ACLU Disgusted President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law despite 'serious reservations'. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down, including Obama's signing statements and finally, thoughts from the ACLU.

  • NY police raid OWS office, nab several The US police have attacked the Global Revolution Livestream office of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in New York, arresting several activists and journalists as the crackdown on media intensifies.

  • Occupy the Corporations: Stop the Impostors! On January 21, as a part of our Nationwide Day of Action to overturn Citizens United v. FEC and end corporate rule, Public Citizen is working with local activists to ‘apprehend’ corporate impostors posing as ‘people’ with the same constitutional rights as the rest of us.

  • Occupy protest follows 123rd annual Rose Parade Anti-Wall Street protesters gathered by the hundreds to Occupy the Rose Parade. John Cantor is a U.S. Army Veteran who came from Occupy San Diego. Cantor says he's serving as a medical volunteer because he believes in the cause.

  • Nobody Understands Debt, By PAUL KRUGMAN In 2011, as in 2010, America was in a technical recovery but continued to suffer from disastrously high unemployment. And through most of 2011, as in 2010, almost all the conversation in Washington was about something else: the allegedly urgent issue of reducing the budget deficit.

2012 Jan 06

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Port Shutdown Arrests Hi Andrea - If you were at the South gate on the day of The Port Shut Down 12/12 and witnessed any of the arrests and are willing to testify, please contact me.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Join the Solidarity Caravan to Longview, Washington ILWU rank and file, Occupies in Longview, Portland, Seattle, Oakland, LA and other West Coast Occupies are organizing to blockade a grain ship coming to Longview. This ship is intended to load scab cargo from the EGT terminal. The date won't be known until 3-4 days in advance, but is anticipated to be sometime in January

2012 Jan 07

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • San Diego activists plan bus trip to DC to lobby Congress Occupy San Diego activists are going to occupy a Greyhound Bus all the way to Washington D.C. to join with other activists from across the country for a series of actions in front of the Capitol building coordinated to coincide with the opening day of the 2012 congressional session.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • New York City Council Passes Resolution Opposing Corporate Personhood The New York City Council symbolically passed a resolution Wednesday opposing "corporate personhood." Resolution 1172 formally expressed disapproval of the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which declared that corporations have the same first amendment rights as people.

2012 Jan 08

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Michael Moore at the Occupy Wall Street Spokes Council 1/4/12 At the meeting of Occupy Wall Street's Spokes Council on January 4, documentarian Michael Moore came to listen, sitting in the back, right behind Waging Nonviolence editor Nathan Schneider. When the meeting ended, after a bit of a debate, the occupiers asked Moore whether he'd like to speak. Though flustered at first, speak he did.

  • Police arrest journalists at Occupy Wall Street protests Protesters from New York City and beyond gathered today at the front doorstep of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to give the mayor a simple message: Stop arresting journalists who are covering Occupy Wall Street. Coalition for the First Amendment, members of journalists. Stated goal is to highlight police activity that threaten Constitutional protections. 9

2012 Jan 08

Media: Occupy San Diego

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Media: Occupy National and Global

  • #OO #OPD slams woman and her bike to the ground, beat her and chase her down the street! January 7, 2012, a woman and her bike were shoved to the ground. She was then surrounded by several OPD who pulled out billy clubs and pummeled her and her bike. A group of fellow protesters screamed at the cops and ran to her rescue. Though she was pulled away from the grips of the police, she and the group were chased down the street. Moments after this footage, the entire group of protesters on this street were quarantined and illegally detained there for 10 minutes before being released...since they did nothing illegal.

2012 Jan 10

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • IN SEARCH OF A MIRACLE A La Mesa woman seeks an angel investor to buy her home—saving her disabled mother and a recently homeless friend from being thrown out in the streets..

  • Occupy Walk meeting Occupy Walk will be having it’s first planning and discussion meeting this Wednesday at 7:00pm. We will be meeting at the hART Lounge located at 734 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92101. Parking is available at the Granada Wig Store parking lot at the corner of Park Blvd & F Street, which is ½ a block away from the hART Lounge. Park in the RESERVED spaces only. They belong to the Wig Store and are available during closed hours. See you all there!

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Oh, the Irony! Bank of America Plaza in Atlanta Faces Foreclosure Atlanta’s Bank of America Plaza is one of the 10 tallest structures in the U.S. And thanks to troubles at its namesake Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and other one-time tenants, the skyscraper could be one of the tallest foreclosure tales of the financial crisis as it struggles to meet its debt service and offices remain empty.

  • Investigate Wall Street Bank Fraud The greed and fraud of Wall Street banks caused the loss of millions of homes and billions of dollars in the housing crash. Now we need President Obama to take a strong stance for homeowners, and for accountability, by opening a federal investigation into big bank fraud.

2012 Jan 11

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Women Occupy San Diego Press Conference 1-9-12 Women Occupy San Diego had a press conference on Monday, January 9th, 2012 following the brutal arrest of Stephanie Jennings the weekend before. Mike Garcia also spoke as well as Bryon Pease.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Speaker's City Council shutdown a video hit Monk was telling the council that it was “embarrassing” that Hall had three members of the public removed from Monday’s council committee meeting because he did not care for the things they had to say.

  • Corporate Personhood Undermines Democracy The 2012 elections will feature unprecedented spending by corporations and the elite 1 percent, much of it channeled through independent organizations and trade associations not required to disclose their donors

2012 Jan 12

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Mayor To Deliver Final State of The City Speech Sanders -- who will leave office in December following two terms – is also expected to announce new donations that will fund the completion of the new Central Library in the East Village

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • White House protesters call for Guantanamo closure Human rights activists, some dressed in orange prison jumpsuits, protested in front of the White House Monday to demand that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed, 10 years after it opened.

2012 Jan 13

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy San Diego chorister arrested The group was formed by Women Occupy San Diego, a band of Occupy supporters, to help show that Occupy has non-confrontational, middle-class backers. But their usually cheerful performances took a bad turn last Saturday night when Occupella member Stephanie Jennings was arrested on battery charges at the Civic Center, along with another protestor.

  • Sanders Delivers His Final State of the City Address Mayor Jerry Sanders delivered his final State of the City Address tonight, using a theme of "Closing the Deal" to encourage city officials to finish what they started on improving civic finances and completing major building projects.

  • Rules Committee video Martha starts at about 1:30 or so. Ray starts at about 1:39 through 1:41. Josephne spoke at about 1:42 through to 1:43. Ed Bruckner at 1:44 through 1:47. Mitchell at about 1:47 through 1:50. Chris West at 1:54 through 1:56. Sharok (sp?) 1:57 through 1:58. Patricia 1:57 through 1:58. William Johnson 1:58 through 2:01. Tony Young massage - 2:01. Todd Gloria - 2:01 through 2:03 (thanks for nothing)

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Jan 14

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • SDPD Chief B. Long Talks with OSD Chief Long wants the free practice of Civil Rights in San Diego. Chief Long gives his email address, and would like to hear about when patrol officers manipulate, or wrongfully exercise the law.

  • MEMORIAL CEREMONY HONORS FALLEN SOLDIER, FORMER CHEF AT OCCUPY SAN DIEGO U.S. Army Master Sergeant Jay Polk has reportedly been killed overseas while on active duty with U.S. special forces, according to friends and family in San Diego, where he had been living recently.
    During a candlelight memorial service held this evening at the Civic Center Plaza, one mourner observed, “Jay was a Cavalryman, he was a Master Sergeant, and he knew how to take care of people.” The service was attended by local veterans, occupy members, and friends of the fallen soldier

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Barricades Come Down at Zuccotti Park Security guards working for Brookfield Properties took down a cordon of metal barricades surrounding Zuccotti Park on Tuesday evening, but entered the park later that night to enforce rules forbidding anyone to lie down.

  • Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

  • Occupy protester spends 3 weeks in jail for writing on sidewalk An Occupy Orlando protester has been freed after spending three weeks in jail for using chalk to write on the sidewalk. The City of Orlando dropped the charges against Timothy Michael Osmar because they said the three weeks he spent in jail was about what he would have served if convicted of the crime.

  • Hartmann: Blood Sucking Leeches vs Single Payer Single payer could create 2.6 million jobs & save America $317 billion. Healthcare in America is a cancer that's making a very small group richer than their wildest dreams and leaving the rest of us to deal with the fallout. But there is a solution.

  • Bank of America Ponders Retreat Bank of America Corp. has told U.S. regulators that it is willing to retreat from some parts of the country if its financial problems deepen, according to people familiar with the situation.

  • Legislators: Commit to Nuclear Abolition As our first action of 2012, let’s help to build a stronger network of legislators in the United States and around the world working for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

2012 Jan 15

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Jan 16

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Jan 17

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Protesters kicked off bus Kicking people off a bus because you don’t agree with their cause is akin to kicking a black person off a bus because of their color. It’s not right and should not be tolerated in the United States of America. But this is the kind of hatred that corporations and conservatives have generated against the Occupy Movement. To call Greyhound and tell them how you feel, call 800-442-8480

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Jan 18

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy Congress: Could it be politics as unusual? Chris Mc Kay, a 44-year-old auto glass installer in San Diego who left his job to participate in Occupy fulltime, believes the movement will begin to focus on politics over the course of the year. But he noted the changes that have already occurred.
    "We're four months old, we're learning, we're adjusting, we're growing," he said. Before Occupy, people may have said, "’I'm one person, what can I do?’ Now, I think Americans are starting to think I am one person, but I can do something."

  • Campaigns embracing 'Occupy' themes Others carrying the banner range from U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to House candidate Lori Saldaña of San Diego. Both are Democrats.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Sgt. Shamar Thomas Detains Sen. Carl Levin Over NDAA On day #1 of Occupy Congress, Sgt Shamar Thomas (of 1 Marine Vs. 30 Cops fame) joined forces with members of from both Occupations in DC and Occupy Wall Street in a protest inside of Senator Carl Levin's office today, "detaining" Sen. Levin... indefinitely for Co- Sponsoring the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

2012 Jan 19

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy protesters rally at Capitol Several hundred protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement converged on the West Lawn of the Capitol Tuesday to decry the influence of corporate money in politics and voice myriad other grievances.

2012 Jan 20

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Wisconsin, We Did It! Wisconsinites collected over 1,000,000 signatures to recall Governor Scott Walker! The signatures were delivered to the Government Accountability Board on January 17, 2012, and the people showed up to celebrate.

  • Occupy Congress video: Police arrest OWS protesters On Tuesday the Occupy Wall Street movement took their protest to Congress. This marks the movement's four month anniversary and hundreds gathered outside the Capitol where protesters held signs and chanted slogans. A handful of people were arrested and the last confirmed number was six arrests. The Occupy movement also paid a visit to the White House and the Supreme Court.

  • Occupy Congress - OFFICIAL VIDEO These are the chronological events that took place on January 17th, 2012 by the Occupy Movement.Starting at the Capital building, then proceeding to the Rayburn House Office Building. Marching up Constitution Ave to the Supreme Court Building then back down ending at the White House. This was filmed with a Canon 5d Markii and a Cannon 7d. Song by: Band Of Horses - The Funeral.

2012 Jan 21

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Jan 22

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Happy anniversary, Obama. Thanks for the broken promises! Three years to the day after Barack Obama told millions of Americans that that was what had brought him to Washington — three years after he said those words in his inaugural address from the steps of the Capitol Building — the hope, the change and the abolishment of false promises remain largely something that has failed materialize.

  • Protest Camps to speak at Occupy event with Chris Hedges Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges. Hedges has been a supportive and outspoken commentator on the Occupy Movement, visiting Occupations across the US. Hedges has taught at Columbia University, New York University,Princeton University and The University of Toronto

  • Ben & Jerry on Citizens United Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield discuss Business for Democracy and Citizens United.

2012 Jan 23

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • "Occupy" targets banks, corporate campaign spending Hundreds of Occupy activists clashed with police and stormed a vacant hotel in San Francisco on Friday, capping a day of protests in the city's financial district and separate anti-Wall Street rallies at federal courthouses across the country.

  • Our Citizens United Supreme Court Action: ‘The US Supreme Koch’ On the second anniversary of the much-despised Citizens United ruling, protesters gathered at the Supreme Court and unfurled a large banner reading “U.S. Supreme Koch” to protest the undue influence that far-right special interests and billionaires like the Koch brothers wield over the Court and U.S. politics.

2012 Jan 24

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Republican National Committee Files Brief Seeking To Allow Corporate Funding Of Campaigns One of the few remaining limits on corporations’ power to buy and sell American elections is that corporations are not allowed to give money directly to federal candidates. Citizens United frees them to spend billions of dollars running ads or otherwise trying to change the result of an election to suit their interests, but corporations cutting checks directly to candidates or to political committees such as the Republican National Committee is one of the few things the Supreme Court’s conservatives have not yet imposed upon the country.

  • National Lawyers Guild Files FOIA Requests Seeking Evidence of Federal Role in Occupy Crackdown With Congress no longer performing its sworn role of defending the US Constitution, the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee and the Partnership for Civil Justice today filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and the National Parks Service to release "all their information on the planning of the coordinated law enforcement crackdown on Occupy protest encampments in multiple cities over the course of recent days and weeks."

  • SFPD Pepper Spray Seminarian Filming Documentary at Occupy Wall Street West While filming the Occupy Wall Street peaceful protest for a documentary I am working on, I was pepper sprayed by SFPD without warning. I was immediately blinded, and because it was raining, the pepper spray kept running into my eyes from my hair keeping me blinded for nearly an hour. Protesters guided me to safety multiple times as the police apparently were surging at the crowd. They also secured my gear and secured it in my backpack. Street medics treated me and hustled me several blocks away to safety. Eventually I was able to open my eyes again and interviewed myself

2012 Jan 25

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Defacement of Property discussion It is unlawful to cut, break, deface, or injure any building, monument, rock, fountain, cage, pen, fence, bench, hydrant, swing, or other structure, apparatus or property, or dig caves or other depressions within the cliff areas adjacent to the ocean shoreline without the written permission of the City Manager.
    What one of the occupiers (Angel) was charged with for drawing with chalk on the sidewalk!!! thats exactly how the law 63.0102(5) reads!

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin Over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has filed suit against President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes controversial provisions authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world, without charge or trial.

  • Police repress protest against tuition hikes at UC Riverside On January 19, over 800 students at the University of California, Riverside were met by 200 police as they demonstrated outside a regents meeting. The university officials were discussing plans for another hike in tuition in response to cuts imposed by Democratic Party Governor Jerry Brown.

  • So You Think Occupy Wall Street Has Faded? Think Again These are the chronological events that took place on January 17th, 2012 by the Occupy Movement.Starting at the Capitol building, then proceeding to the Rayburn House Office Building. Marching up Constitution Ave to the Supreme Court Building then back down ending at the White House.

  • Newt’s Faulty Food-Stamp Claim And under Obama, the increase so far has been 14.2 million. To be exact, the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama’s time in office than during Bush’s.

2012 Jan 26

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Citizens’ Review Board Gets an Earful About Police Harassment of San Diego Occupiers Most stood and spoke with pride and respect, cradling their cause reverently, boldly, while others barely concealed their rage with fiery speeches. They told of being knocked to the ground, punched, the burn of mace in their faces, shoved against concrete walls, brutally dragged to police vans, being booked into jail on outrageous felony charges; all in retaliation for using their U.S. Constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech and free assembly.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • The Weirdest Things Occupy Protesters Get Arrested For Wearing a Mask in Public: This is definitely the silliest charge we've heard of. A few jurisdictions have laws about this, and it seems pretty weird considering millions of children (America's youth!) violate it every Halloween

2012 Jan 27

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • UAW Local 4123 San Diego State University has backed-off its draconian punishment of SDSU student Ashley Wardle. However Seth Newmeyer, a UCLA undergraduate who joined CSU students in solidarity during the November 16, 2011 protest, is facing misdemeanor vandalism charges and a $32,000 fine for allegedly breaking a door at the Chancellor's office

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy First - Banking for the 99% The Occupy First Credit Unions will be run by The People and for The People. We are seeking individuals with skills in finance, marketing, law, customer support and/or software development to join this virtual occupation. The federation will be nationwide and we need people in your area to join us. Please include your email address for updates.

  • Win A Tent or Laptop For Your Occupation! So we're giving away five 11'x11' command post tents worth $5000 each, three media laptops equipped with webcams for livestreaming and twelve $100 gift certificates to the Occupy Supply store to reward occupations for their kick-ass community activism! 1/30 deadline.

2012 Jan 28

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy D.C. Eviction Begins Occupy Washington D.C. receiving eviction notices on the morning of 1/28/2012. Police explain content of the notices and impending enforcement action...

2012 Jan 29

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy DC -- Police tase innocent protester The video does not lie, after the incident the man had a seizure, and was then refused medical treatment. Ⓐnonymous is always watching. Officers badge number 398. Officers name - Lemke Commanding officer - Sgt. Reid ...as you wish (More video coming soon)

2012 Jan 30

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • VIDEO, PHOTOGRAPHS & WITNESSES NEEDED. On 10/28/2012 @ approximately 6:50 PM, Michael Dennison was tackled and arrested by SDPD. The SDPD is claiming that Michael attacked a Sergeant and knocked off his nametag.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Police arrest over 300 protesters at Occupy Oakland Police in Oakland, California, have used tear-gas and flash-grenades as a 2,000-strong Occupy Oakland march turned violent, with some protesters claiming that rubber bullets had been also fired into the crowd. At least 300 people were arrested, police say.

  • Occupy Oakland January 28, 2012 - Police Brutality The action to take the Henry J Kaiser building started peaceful. The police diverted our route but the march continued toward the building. A fence was torn down in an attempt to take the building and the police fired tear gas

  • .Hundreds Held in Oakland Occupy Protest About 400 people were arrested and three officers injured late Saturday and early Sunday after a march to take over a vacant building by members of the Occupy movement in Oakland, Calif., turned into a confrontation with the police.

2012 Jan 31

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Members Of Occupy SD Attempt To Arrest Mayor Sanders About 20 members of Occupy San Diego tried to make a citizen's arrest of Mayor Jerry Sanders today, alleging that he committed embezzlement when he allowed the temporary name change of Qualcomm Stadium to "Snapdragon Stadium."

  • Oakland Becomes the Epicenter for Journalist Arrests While most of the attention surrounding journalist arrests at Occupy protests has focused on New York City, where more than 20 journalists have been detained, it looks like Oakland will be giving the Big Apple a run for its money. On Jan. 28, Oakland police detained six journalists during mass arrests of Occupy protesters. This comes just weeks after Oakland police apprehended another journalist who, in a video of the arrest, appeared to be obeying orders to disperse.

2012 Feb 01

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy activists try to arrest mayor About 20 members of Occupy San Diego tried to make a citizen's arrest of Mayor Jerry Sanders Monday, alleging that he committed embezzlement when he allowed the temporary name change of Qualcomm Stadium to "Snapdragon Stadium.''

  • Occupy group tries to Arrest Sanders over Snapdragon deal About 20 members of Occupy San Diego tried to make a citizen's arrest of Mayor Jerry Sanders Monday, alleging that he committed embezzlement when he allowed the temporary name change of Qualcomm Stadium to "Snapdragon Stadium."

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Mass arrest attempted at 19th St. in Oakland #J28 1. A march was stopped at Telegraph Ave and William St.
    2. All park exists were blocked off
    3. The crowed was ordered to leave without being allowed any exit
    4. Gas / Chemicals, projectiles, batons, and explosives were used on the marchers
    I was not sure during the filming, but gas was definitely used on this residential area. I definitely felt sick later as the gas reached my apartment.
    Protesters did not destroy any personal property. Building windows and cars remained untouched (in this area at least).
    I have no doubt that the number of marchers will increase next time. This group started with camping - The city's responses seem to be slowly turning them into a militia.
    See related video from earlier the same day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46UeXGhvaTI
    It's hard to see in the video, but this park is a monument to humanitarianism: http://www.remember-them.org/
    Stay Safe Oakland!

  • How Swedes And Norwegians Broke The Power Of The ‘1 Percent’ Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment.

2012 Feb 02

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Oakland Move In March 1:28:2012 This is Footage of the Occupy Oakland Move In March 1/28/2012. A chronological video documentation of the events of the day. From the camera of a participant. Interesting facts added, based on information gained and experienced in the middle of it all.

2012 Feb 03

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • New Mexico House Passes Bill Calling On Congress To Reverse Citizens United Another blow has been struck against Citizens United, and this time it’s not by a city council. The New Mexico House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday, calling for Congress to overturn Citizens United via Constitutional Amendment. The final vote was 38-29 with one independent and one Republican joining Democrats to rebuke the controversial Supreme Court case that has allowed corporations and the super wealthy to donate unlimited amounts of money to candidates through the unfettered use of Super PACS

  • Occupy Oakland and State Repression A crowd of several hundred quickly swelled to a couple thousand, as Occupy Oakland attempted to occupy the vacant Kaiser Convention Center. The goal was to use it as an indoor base for Occupy Oakland – a place to have General Assemblies and meetings, share food and get shelter for the winter.

2012 Feb 04

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Alternet: Why #OWS Needs to Denounce Violent Tactics on Display at Occupy Oakland The Occupy Movement, “the 99 percent,” has, ironically, been hijacked by a small minority within its ranks. I speak of a small percentage of Occupiers who are okay with property destruction. As we saw in Oakland over the weekend: They’re okay with breaking windows, trashing city buildings and throwing bottles at the police. In short: They are not nonviolent. They are willing to commit petty criminal acts masked as a political statement.

2012 Feb 05

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Feb 06

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Bill Maher: Occupy Protesters Are "Douchebags" Who Need To "Get A Job" Martha Sullivan says: Bill Maher was pretty harsh on Occupy on his show last night. I watched the episode, and the delivery was even harsher than the transcript following. I don't agree with his assessment, bc/ I am actively involved and see the wide range of people engaged far beyond the surface appearances. But this is an indicator of how even those sympathetic to our issues can view us.

  • How do Conservatives and Liberals See the World? | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com -- Hei Eksgirl says: Bill Moyers represents journalism at its best. In this episode, Haidt explains how the majority of people are not focused on politics so up for grabs. Haidt explains that the GOP has been consistently better at presenting a moral story behind their politics so is more successful at capturing the minds of people. Of course, we won't have a real democracy until money is taken out of politics...every contribution is a bribe....my words.

2012 Feb 08

Media: Occupy San Diego

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZNX1faIuQU

Media: Occupy National and Global

One Hundred Years and Counting of the Free Speech Movement in San Diego

2012 Feb 10

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • The World According to Monsanto -- A former VP of Monsanto, Michael Taylor, has been appointed food safety administrator of the FDA. Guess what chapter in the corporate takeover of government is not in the mainstream news?

2012 Feb 05

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Feb 10

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • California Democrats Gather for Convention Only to Face Angry Democrats and Progressives About the NDAA on Sat., Feb. 11th Dems will be facing an angry crowd on Saturday rallying across the street from the convention – an angry crowd made up of Democrats, independents, progressives and yes, even some Republicans. Angry because most Democrat senators and half of the House Dems voted for the Bill-of-Rights-gutting National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, that was then signed by another Democrat – the one in the White House.
    The NDAA allows the government to pick up and detain American citizens without charges, without trials and without habeas corpus, and has been roundly condemned by the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, Human Rights Watch, and just about every civil libertarian in the country.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Labor, Occupy D.C. protesters target CPAC Hundreds of protesters converged on the Marriott Wardman Park hotel this afternoon to protest the Conservative Political Action Conference, saying the group represents the growing gap between the rich and the poor.The protesters represented various unions, progressive groups and Occupy D.C. — timing their event to Mitt Romney’s planned speech to thousands of conservatives attending the conference.
    “I’m here to tell Mitt Romney and CPAC to stop giving tax breaks to the rich, and create good jobs for the 99 percent,” said John Butler, an unemployed District resident who is part of a group called Our DC. “We want them to see us, hear us, feel us.”

2012 Feb 11

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • One Hundred Years and Counting of the Free Speech Movement in San Diego Last night members of Labor, Occupy Women San Diego, and San Diego Occupy celebrated the hundred years of the Free Speech Movement at 5th and E by recreating some of the events that happened a hundred years ago. There were plenty of soap boxes where speakers stood and gave speeches on the nature of the anniversary, and the state of Free Speech today. At the height of the event there were about two hundred people at the corner listening to Wobbly music, and speeches by activists.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Courts and Dept of Justice Agree: Videotaping Police is OK “Just as police officers use technology to watch citizens, including patrol car cameras, traffic light cameras and radar to track speeding, the public [also] has a right to monitor the work of officers on the public payroll.”

2012 Feb 12

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy protesters target California Democrats Mike Oren of Los Angeles said he was among 34 people who traveled on a bus from Southern California to the convention Saturday morning. "We're here to protest the National Defense Authorization Act," he said.

  • Occupy San Diego InterOccupy Conference – Morning Update On Saturday morning as planned at 8:30am, protesters with Occupy San Diego began to assemble at Civic Center Plaza on 3rd and B for the all day Inter Occupy conference. The first couple hours at the plaza were filled with sign making, passing out welcome packets which contained information about the day’s events, and getting to know the protesters who came down to Occupy San Diego from other cities and states for the day. By the time 10am came around, the protesters were armed with signs, banners, lots of energy, and over a dozen soap boxes. At 10:20 they took to the streets. Over fifty people formed three single files lines at the Plaza and marched south on B street, zigzagging through the Gaslamp district.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase The ragtag Occupy Wall Street encampments that sprang up in scores of cities last fall, thrusting “We are the 99 percent” into the vernacular, have largely been dismantled, with a new wave of crackdowns and evictions in the past week.
    Far from dissipating, groups around the country say they are preparing for a new phase of larger marches and strikes this spring that they hope will rebuild momentum and cast an even brighter glare on inequality and corporate greed

2012 Feb 13

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Wall Street Activist Defends Nonviolence The increasingly desperate and violent tactics of the 1% are the reason we all have to stay strong and remain committed to nonviolence. What we are doing could be the most important thing the world has ever seen. We are facing increasingly brutal resistance because what we're doing is working. We have already changed the dialogue of the nation. We have threatened the powers that be. We have proven ourselves to be strong and courageous. > As violence has followed me, I have learned many things about it. I have learned of its temptation, and felt it many times. It is wired into us: hurt me and I hurt you. There is a reward mechanism for violence in the brain. It’s cathartic. Sometimes it gets the result you want in a very quick way. I also have learned that the solutions violence creates are only short term. Long-term solutions are lost, because as you become more violent, so do your adversaries.
    I also know that the 1% wants us to be violent. The message of Occupy Wall Street is a threat to every foundation they stand on. They are violent not because they want to hurt us, but because they want to discredit us. If that happens, people will ignore us and they will have succeeded in silencing us.
    If Occupy Oakland crosses the line from peace to violence it will give the 1% the very opening they have been searching for. It will lead to our message being lost in the public uproar about our tactics. We will no longer be a group being persecuted because we dared to exercise our rights to speak out and seek peaceful change. Instead, much of the world will view us as a violent group which is breaking the law and deserves to be silenced. If you decide to become complicit in the violence, the truth will no longer be a shield for any of us.

2012 Feb 14

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • OCCUPY PROTESTS AT CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION Around 100 people, including 40 local protesters and 60 from other areas including Los Angeles and Riverside, sought to draw attention of Democratic leaders and delegates. Issues included corporate power, civil liberties, homelessness and foreclosures. Senator Diane Feinstein announced at a luncheon that she has introduced legislation to repeal a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act that civil libertarians fear could allow indefinite detention of citizens. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi referenced the “99 percent” and called for a constitutional amendment to eliminate corporate personhood. Women Occupy San Diego, a group of women wearing sashes inspired by the Free Speech Movement that began in San Diego in 1912, sang modified lyrics to popular songs outside the Convention Center

  • Lies, Loathing, and Hope at the Democratic Convention and Beyond The response to the small Occupy/anti-National Defense Authorization Act protest at the Democratic convention was indicative of where we are politically in many ways. Some delegates fearfully scurried away from the protesters, others angrily told them they were protesting the wrong party (although Obama did sign it), and others, still, stopped and expressed solidarity with Occupy.

  • Occupy Makes Democratic Convention Showing Members of the Occupy movement had perhaps their strongest San Diego showing in recent weeks as the first Occupy So Cal Conference brought together members from various cities across the region on Saturday.

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Feb 15

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • 'Cash Mobs' Strike Again Lauren Way coordinates Cash Mobs in San Diego. She recently announced the location for Monday night's flash mob on the group's Facebook page: In Old Town, mobbers will meet at the entrance of Fiesta De Reyes, on Juan St. between Wallace and Mason St. The meet-up time is 6:30 p.m.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • http://www.revolutiontruth.org/live/ Chris Hedges' most recent Truthdig column was a searing condemnation of Black Bloc as part of the Occupy movement. This article comes at a time when Occupy is suffering from coordinated and vicious attacks from the outside, weariness, winter (in the Western hemisphere), and rifts on the inside, and a seeming disconnect between the larger public and the movement itself. The responses to Hedges' article have been quite polarized. Some resonated with his obvious frustration and concern; others found the piece to be an offensive conflation of tactics and groups and a misguided attack on anarchists. The piece generated intense debate around the world, opening up discussions that are delving into the heart of the nature of Occupy and the profoundly diverse perspectives embodied in this movement. Join us for a panel with Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers, Zevin Zeese, Georgia Sagri and two others from Occupy Wall Street to discuss anarchist philosophy, Black Bloc, and Occupy.

  • Where’s the Love? Occupy St. Valentine’s Day! Have you had your Dreams crushed? Heart broken? Want to love again, but maybe feel the need to end a bad experience once and for all? To heal ourselves as a community, to reclaim our capacity to Love and Trust, we are joining together to celebrate one another– and to make our voices heard clearly: we want a system that respects people, plants, animals and the planet itself!

  • Occupy fights the law: Will the law win? From Boise to Nashvile, the movement faces an unconstitutional legal siege. The Occupy movement is an exercise in the workings of power whether it is social, financial, policing or political. The occupations that began in September spread with an infectious passion in part because the police violence and mass arrests, the tried-and-true methods of state power employed to suppress radical movements, backfired and the movement grew more. By October hundreds of encampments had popped up nationwide with the tacit cooperation and sometimes explicit approval of local officials. For a few heady weeks Occupy Wall Street had the glow of popular legitimacy – social power – trumping whatever fusty laws prohibited camping or a continuous presence in a public space.

  • Workers Occupy AT&T Atlanta Headquarters to Stop Layoffs While workers at Verizon and Verizon Wireless have been fighting for dignity and respect since last summer, workers at AT&T are facing attacks of their own. In the last month, the company has targeted over 740 union workers, primarily in the southern region of the country, to lay-off despite reporting record profits this quarter.

  • Santorum: "Barack Obama has sided with the 99 versus 1.” Leave it to Rick to accidentally tell it like it is while trying to woo the radical right wingers that now control the GOP. While the Occupy Wall Street people were protesting his campaign appearance, Rick couldn't help but mock the OWS movement, the 99% they represent and the President that supports them.
    "... That’s not what a leader of this country should do but Barack Obama has sided with the 99 versus one.”
    “He supported this movement, this movement that is intolerant and disrespectful. He supported them and embraced them,” Santorum said to loud cheers from his supporters. “Why? Because it’s consistent with exactly what Barack Obama’s trying to do with this country.”Could anyone imagine the day when someone running for President would publicly side with one percent?

  • Some Who Decline an Optional Iris Photo Are Kept Longer in Jail, Critics Say After her arrest at an Occupy Wall Street protest in December, Samantha Wilson expected to be booked, fingerprinted and subjected to a mug shot. But when a police officer raised a small device to her face and began photographing her eyes, she declined. Ms. Wilson, 32, said her refusal resulted in a threat from the officer. “He said: ‘It’s not really optional. It’ll take you longer to get out of here if you don’t do it,’ ” she recalled.

  • Two Occupy Wall St. protesters sue the cop who pepper-sprayed them Anthony Bologna target of women's lawsuit. A high-ranking cop who pepper-sprayed penned-in Occupy Wall Street protesters has been zapped with a lawsuit by two women who were in the line of fire.
    Chelsea Elliott and Jeanne Mansfield are suing Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna in Manhattan Federal Court for blasting them in the face with pepper-spray during a protest last Sept. 24 near Union Square.The incident was caught on video, and 1.5 million people watched it on You Tube, prompting outrage and drawing attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Bologna was docked 10 days of vacation for violating NYPD regulations.
    In an interview Monday, Mansfield, 24, a Boston writer, said she was suing because she wanted to put the NYPD on notice that what Bologna did was wrong.

  • Romney condemns auto-industry rescue Looking back over the last three years, there's arguably no better example of a policy Republicans got wrong than the rescue of the American auto industry. When President Obama launched his ambitious policy in 2009, he was taking a major gamble -- not only with the backbone of American manufacturing, but with his presidency and its ability to use the power of government to repair a private industry facing collapse.

  • Occupy protesters tased at Santorum event Things got a little rowdy during Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s visit to Tacoma, Washington on Monday, where reports said that authorities used a taser on least one Occupy Wall Street protester. “I think it’s really important for you to understand what this radical element represents, because what they represent is true intolerance,” Santorum said of the Occupy Tacoma protesters, who have an encampment right next to the museum where he was speaking. He added that they should “go out and get a job” instead of “standing here unemployed, yelling at somebody.”

2012 Feb 16

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Feb 17

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Darrell Issa says: Women should be seen but not heard. Capitol Hills latest megalomaniac is on a roll. Not content with trampling the First Amendment in Freedom Plaza and Mc Pherson Square Darrell Issa now turns his attention on women’s bodies; and not in a healthy way. Using his chairmanship of the House Oversight committee as a weapon of mass disenfranchisement Issa has aimed his latest inquisition at trying to halt women’s coverage of birth control care in employer health plans.

  • Darrell Issa Compares His All-Male Anti-Contraception Panel To Martin Luther King House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been catching flack for holding a panel today relating to women’s access to birth control that featured zero women, but Issa won’t let the fact that few Americans agree with his position deter him. Taking to Twitter this evening, he fired back with a always-appropriate Martin Luther King Jr. comparison:

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Citizens United Part II: Montana Supreme Court Collides With U.S. Supreme Court The fate of Montana's century-old ban on corporate political spending is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a possible sequel to the hotly contested Citizens United decision handed down two years ago.
    In 2010, a five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations' independent spending in elections does not corrupt -- or even appear to corrupt -- the political process. On Wednesday, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock submitted a brief to the Court with facts that suggest otherwise as he urged the justices to uphold his state's ban on corporate political spending.

  • Jimmy Carter casts Occupy movement as successful Former President Jimmy Carter said on Wednesday that Occupy organizers have created a "relatively successful" movement because they focused national discussion on wealth disparity despite lacking leadership and a unifying set of goals.

  • With camps gone, Occupiers prepare for new fights CEDAR FALLS, Iowa (Reuters) - Their encampments are largely gone, but the U.S. Occupy movement is far from dead, with organizers focused on a next wave of protest. In Iowa, a major farming state, Occupy activists are mobilizing with other groups against agricultural biotechnology firm, Monsanto. In Oklahoma, Occupy plans to target retail giant Walmart for protests. Groups in more than 50 cities are planning a national protest day February 29, targeting numerous corporations.

  • "Corporate Persons" to Greet Romney in Cleveland The “candidates” will be costumed members of the Cleveland branch of Move To Amend, a national group lobbying to end corporate personhood. The group says it is “sponsoring the ridiculous public spoof to dramatize the ridiculous notion that corporations, legal creations of government, possess Bill of Rights and other inalienable constitutional rights meant solely for human beings.” It’s targeting Romney for his statement last summer at the Iowa State Fair that “corporations are people, my friend.”

2012 Feb 18

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Civil Liberties Group Joins Occupy Protester’s Fight The New York Civil Liberties Union submitted papers to a Manhattan Criminal Court judge on Thursday saying that trespassing charges against a protester arrested as the police cleared Zuccotti Park in November should be dismissed because the park’s owner did not have the authority to order anyone out.

  • http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Occupy-Protesters-Help-Vet-Save-Home-139327183.html The Occupy Movement had a Valentine's Day message for banks, and it wasn't about love. Organizers called it "break up with your bank day." And a foreclosure auction in Chino gave them the perfect venue to express their views. After all, Iraq War Veteran Sgt. Anthony Chavoya was about to lose his family's Victorville home at a Valentine's Day foreclosure auction. Late Tuesday afternoon, Sgt. Chavoya and his supporters got some good news. The auction had been delayed

  • Occupy Movement Gets A PAC Last week, John Paul Thornton of Decatur, Ala. filed to create a PAC for the Occupy Movement. “PAC” is an acronym for a political action committee, or an organization that campaigns for or against candidates, legislation, and ballot initiatives. Money will also be used for federal candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders because of their pledges to get money out of politics.

  • Why I Both Love and Hate the Occupy Movement Over the past months, much has been written about the Occupy movement. Critics bash the movement, calling protesters "lazy freeloaders who should shut up and get a job," while supporters praise the movement, donating money, time, and supplies. Regardless of where you stand on the spectrum of support, one thing is certain: the Occupy movement has started a new dialogue between people, which in many respects is its main goal.

2012 Feb 19

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Lori Saldaña Launches Campaign for the 52nd Congressional District Primary Lori Saldaña officially launched her primary run for the June 5th election, for Congressional District 52. She is running against Scott Peters on the Democratic Party Primary. During the event Saldaña highlighted her achievements in Sacramento during her six years in the Legislature. During the event a young man with her opponent Scott Peters’ Campaign tried to disrupt it. His efforts to mar the kick-off event was prevented by volunteers.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Supreme Court May Reconsider "Citizens United" Could it be that the Montana Supreme Court has given the United States Supreme Court the opportunity to reconsider the "Citizens United" decision? The Montana ruling on Dec. 30, 2011 defied the highest court in the land by upholding Montana's ban on corporate spending in state elections, prompting a very interesting response from Washington DC.

  • Occupy First Super General Assembly
  • Charges against some NY Occupy protesters dropped New York City prosecutors have been dropping criminal charges against many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last October in a demonstration that helped bring national attention to the movement. Police hit 686 people with criminal charges after halting the march on the landmark span. The New York Times reports (http://nyti.ms/wYUnSX ) that so far, 174 of those cases have been dismissed outright. Another 250 people have agreed to conditional dismissals.

  • Protestors Gear Up For Occupy Koch Town Participants are protesting the Keystone Pipeline project that they say is supported by Koch Industries, but company leaders say they have nothing to do with the pipeline.

2012 Feb 20

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • OccupyWalk, Day 1 - SD to DC! Feb. 18, 2012 Day 1 of www.occupywalk.org leaving from San Diego Freedom Plaza headed to DC! Eight courageous LA & San Diego occupiers left on a journey walking across the country to engage, educate, liberate and unite the 99%. Talk about occupying our right to effect change!!! God speed!

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • 7 Ways to Defeat The Banks: Stop Participating in the System! Provide for yourself and others those necessities which the corrupt system cannot or will not, and the masses (even if they are unaware) will naturally gravitate towards this new and better way. Offer freedom where there was once restriction, and you put the controlling establishment on guard. Eventually, they will either have to conform to you, attack you, or fade away completely. In each case, you win. Even in the event of attack, the system is forced to expose its tyranny and its true colors openly, making your cause stronger. The obvious question now is; how can each one of us use this strategy in our daily lives? Here are just a few easy applications

  • Occupy Oakland march is peaceful For the third week since hundreds were arrested, Occupy Oakland protesters held a peaceful march and demonstration in California.

2012 Feb 21

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Mortgage Settlement 'Whitewash': US Taxpayers Will Pay for Big Bank Settlement Reports in the Financial Times and elsewhere say that US taxpayers may be on the hook to bail out big banks -- again. Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector-general of the TARP, said this morning that the recently approved mortgage deal between the nation's largest banks was "supposed to be a settlement for this remarkable fraud that the banks and the servicers have created across the country" is, in fact, a "political whitewash" because instead of the banks facing punitive action it "is actually going to involve money flowing from the taxpayer into the banks." And, straight to the point, he said, "We're bailing them out again!"

2012 Feb 22

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • The system runs over people Miguel Castaneda reports on Occupy San Diego activist Raul Carranza's personal struggle to stop cuts in funding for the disabled. Jerry Brown is proposing further cuts to social services. For the disabled and the elderly, this means slashing $678 million from Medi-Cal, $168 million from In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) and $1 billion from Cal WORKs.

  • #OccupyWalk: Eight Protestors March From Del Mar, Calif. to Delmar, Del. (or thereabouts) The Occupy Walk is a National March starting at San Diego, California February 11th, walking across the United States taking a southern route to bypass winter in the first months of the walk. They plan on meeting up with people from other Occupations, groups who plan their own route to meet up with the national march, and anyone in any town that wants to walk for the cause. This walk will help promote the Occupy cause by drawing attention to the injustices that were first presented by the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Iceland's Viking Victory Congratulations to Iceland. Fitch has upgraded the country to investment grade BBB – with stable outlook, expecting government debt to peak at 100pc of GDP. The OECD's latest forecast said growth will be 2.4pc this year, after 2.9pc in 2011. Unemployment will fall from 7pc last year to 6.1pc this year and then 5.3pc in 2013.

  • Hundreds of Protesters Form Silent Chain Outside Virginia Capitol Virginia's lawmakers have had an extremely busy month pissing all over the rights of women in the state. And today, when lawmakers made their way into or out of the capitol, they were greeted by over 1,000 protesters— mostly women— linking arms and standing silently in protest.

  • Occupy Nashville Holds Ceremony to Decorate Their Free Speech Money Tent On Tuesday, February 21st at 8:30 p.m., Occupy Nashville will hold a ceremony to decorate their Free Speech Money Tent--the first one of its kind in the country. Because Tennessee legislators recognize that money is free speech but most of them fail to recognize that tents (used to protect protesters from the elements) are free speech, Occupy Nashville is putting their money where their mouth is and attempting to speak the language of the legislators. Perhaps when tents are plastered with cash, they will finally be recognized as a part of the protesters First Amendment rights

  • Occupy Continues to Declare Victories Recent raids on the Occupy movement's major camps have led some mainstream media outlets to declare that all the camps are "gone," a claim easily disproven by visiting any one of the dozens of cells still operating in smaller towns and cities all across the country. Not only are many camps still in operation, but the offshoots of Occupy are not only surviving, but securing real, meaningful victories, which should interest media players who bemoaned that Occupy was too ideologically scattered and too flighty to fight for lasting policy changes.

  • Does Occupy Wall Street Have a Future in Politics? As Occupy Wall Street regroups for upcoming spring demonstrations, the movement has re-entered the headlines, but not for the marches and arrests seen last fall. In January, Nathan Kleinman, a member of the Occupy Philadelphia movement, became what is believed to be the first person from the Occupy movement to run for Congress. Kleinman told Politico when he filed for his candidacy, ”You need 1,000 signatures and a hundred dollars. It’s a pretty low bar.” He has taken to Twitter and Facebook to promote what will likely be an uphill fight against Democratic incumbent Allyson Schwartz.

2012 Feb 23

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • SDPD Oversight Board Faces Favoritism Accusations The San Diego Citizens' Review Board on Police Practices was created to protect citizens from overly aggressive police officers and to clear officers facing erroneous claims, but critics say this important safeguard is failing.

  • Cardiff Kook Gets Political The Cardiff Kook is dressed as an Occupy protester today in a sign of solidarity for the Occupy Walk, a national march that launched in San Diego on Feb. 11.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Secondary Sources: Breaking Up Banks, Inequality and Mobility, Fed Yucks Sheila Bair says it’s time to break up the too big to fail banks. “Yet with gridlock in Washington, don’t count on politicians for a solution. Shareholders, however, have an interest in demanding that big banks split apart. Comparing the valuation for the supersize banks (Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), and J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM)) with their simpler, leaner competitors isn’t pretty.

  • Ben & Jerry Hope to “Get the Dough Out” of Politics The Ben & Jerry’s “Get The Dough Out” petition is an effort to remove money, which is often used by wealthy interests to project undue influence on legislation, from politics. Cohen and Greenfield have headlined several discussion forums on the permeating spread of political bribery in Washington, and several of their talks have been featured on C-SPAN.

  • Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness in Best Recovery Story Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger. Since the end of 2008, the island’s banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population

  • Nurses Fight for a Dose of Tax Justice By now, nurses in bright red scrubs are a familiar sight at rallies in Washington, D.C., New York City, and at Occupy protests around the country. National Nurses United (NNU), a union representing registered nurses, is a major, visible force in the growing movements challenging corporate power.

  • 'Occupy' to hold national conference in Philly A group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to elect 876 "delegates" from around the country and hold a national "general assembly" in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality.

2012 Feb 24

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Movement Plans National Conference In Philadelphia A group affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement is planning a national conference in Philadelphia this summer. According to the group, which is dubbed "The 99% Declaration," an online election will decide on the 876 delegates — a man and woman from each Congressional district — who will gather in Philadelphia on July 4th.

  • NDAA: Liberty Preservation Act This legislative package is a state-level response to constitutional violations by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) – primarily provisions that authorize indefinite detention. Activists, we encourage you to send this to your state senators and representatives – and ask them to introduce this legislation in your state.

  • Minimum Wages Could Be Lowered In Arizona, Florida Republican lawmakers in Arizona are pushing legislation that would lower the legal minimum wage for younger part-time workers and tipped workers such as restaurant servers, just as Florida lawmakers are considering dropping their state's tipped rate as well.

  • OWS PR working group statement on the 99% Declaration The 99% Declaration and its call for a “national general assembly” in Philadelphia in July is not affiliated with or endorsed by Occupy Wall Street, and the organizers’ plans blatantly contradict OWS’ stated principles.

  • Top 6 Corporations to Occupy As organizers start to regroup and set their sites on the spring, groups in 34 cities have agreed to “a day of nonviolent direct action” on Feb. 29 against corporations they accuse of working against the public interest. We nominated six we think deserve an Occupation: Exxon - Headquarters: Irving, TX; General Electric - Headquarters: Fairfield, CT; Monsanto - Headquarters: St. Louis, MO; Bank of America - Headquarters: Charlotte, NC; Walmart - Headquarters: Bentonville, Ark.

  • The Anonymous, Occupy Connection Yesterday I appeared again on cable news network RT America, this time to discuss the Pentagon's apparent view that it can respond to hackers -- those who deface and vandalize HTML webpages -- with military force, i.e. drone bombs and covert strike teams

2012 Feb 25

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • UC Davis officials sued over pepper spraying Three months after being pepper sprayed or allegedly roughed up by UC Davis campus police during an Occupy demonstration, 19 students and alumni Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit claiming that their free speech and assembly rights were violated in the controversial incident.

  • Who’s really violent? Tips for controlling the narrative Occupy Wall Street is similar to many movements in contending that its opponent—for Occupy, the 1 percent—is maintaining a system whose structural, systematic violence far exceeds any violence exhibited by the movement itself.

  • Will the Supreme Court Reconsider Citizens-United? Is there really a chance that the Supreme Court might reconsider Citizens United? A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought so, and I still think it’s an extreme long shot. But a provocative statement last Friday by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer makes this crazy idea worth pondering – which is undoubtedly what the two justices intended.

  • Watch Us Move Our Millions Since the big corporate banks crashed the economy in 2008, they’ve been rewarded with bailouts, tax breaks, and bonuses, while American workers lose jobs and homes. Little wonder that many Americans—and now, institutions and local governments—have been closing their accounts at big corporate banks and transferring their money to community banks and credit unions. The idea is to send a strong message about responsibility to government and Wall Street, while supporting institutions that genuinely stimulate local economies.
    Bank Transfer Day was publicized over five weeks, largely through social networks. In that period, credit unions received an estimated $4.5 billion in new deposits transferred from banks, according to the Credit Union National Association.

  • Occupy Wall Street to Hold July Convention, Elect Delegates A group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to elect 876 "delegates" from around the country and hold a national "general assembly" in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality.
    The group, dubbed the 99% Declaration Working Group, said Wednesday delegates would be selected during a secure online election in early June from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

  • UPDATED: 99 Percent Declaration Working Group announces convention in Philadelphia for July UPDATE (Feb. 23): A statement released from the Occupy Wall Street PR Working Group today clarified that the planned assembly is not an official project generated by the movement.
    “The 99% Declaration and its call for a ‘national general assembly’ in Philadelphia in July is not affiliated with or endorsed by Occupy Wall Street, and the organizers’ plans blatantly contradict OWS’ stated principles,” the release said. “The proposal was also rejected by the General Assembly of Occupy Philadelphia, which passed a resolution stating, ‘We do not support the 99% Declaration, its group, its website, its National GA and anything else associated with it.’ ”

2012 Feb 27

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • SUPPORT ACTION for Brother Hexagon TheGreen -- Jury Trial!Monday at 13:30 until Wednesday at 17:00. San Diego County Courthouse 220 W. Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101 ****Occupy San Diego's activist, Brother Hex, is being put on trial for arrest taking place at the Close the Ports Demonstration we held in San Diego.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • How Occupy helped labor win on the West Coast Earlier this month longshore workers in Washington state reached a contract with a boss that has spent the past year fighting to keep their union out. That company, the multinational EGT, sought to run its new grain terminal in the town of Longview, as the only facility on the West Coast without the famously militant International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). A victory by EGT would have emboldened employers up and down the coast to seek to free themselves of ILWU influence. And if the union — with the help of the Occupy movement — had not defied the law, EGT would have succeeded.

  • Obama Campaign To Wall Street: We'll Go Easy On You Guys President Obama's campaign manager has a message for Wall Street: This time around, we'll lay off. Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, told the hosts of a $38,500 per-plate fundraiser geared towards investment bankers and hedge fund managers that the president wouldn't make Wall Street look bad during his re-election campaign, Bloomberg reports. The assurance follows Obama's call to raise taxes on the rich in his latest budget proposal.

  • Philadelphia Convention Plans Lead To Rift In Occupy Movement In early November, Nathan Kleinman, an Occupy protester in Philadelphia, received an email from someone named Michael Pollok who said he was part of a group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy movement. Pollok said the group planned to hold a convention in Philadelphia during the week of July 4, when 876 delegates from congressional districts around the country would draft "a petition for a redress of grievances" to be presented to Congress.
    Kleinman didn't like the idea, and he didn't think it would go over well with other people at Occupy Philly either. He had a few specific concerns, chief among them the fact that the event involved a representative model of government, as opposed to the consensus model that has characterized the Occupy movement from the beginning.

  • Citizens United Revisited? Buckle Up, Chief Justice Roberts On Friday night, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Montana Supreme Court's December, 2011 decision upholding the state's century-old ban on corporate political spending. The implications of this are huge, as it paves the way for a potential re-opening of the disastrous Citizens United decision that has spawned billionaire-sponsored super PACs. And if that happens, Chief Justice John Roberts better buckle up for a grassroots mobilization unlike any the court has seen in years.

  • Secondary Sources: Breaking Up Banks, Inequality and Mobility, Fed Yucks. Sheila Bair says it’s time to break up the too big to fail banks. “Yet with gridlock in Washington, don’t count on politicians for a solution. Shareholders, however, have an interest in demanding that big banks split apart. Comparing the valuation for the supersize banks (Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), and J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM)) with their simpler, leaner competitors isn’t pretty.

  • What if Occupy Created a Movement so Big it Couldn't Control it? Occupy Wall Street is going on a press offensive to correct a round of stories on Wednesday that reported it was planning a national assembly for the summer, the latest example of the decentralized movement seeing its name used in ways its organizers don't support.

  • Bruce Bartlett on Where the Right Went Wrong In this Moyers & Company segment, Bill Moyers talks with conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, who wrote “the bible” for the Reagan Revolution, worked on domestic policy for the Reagan White House, and served as a top treasury official under the first President Bush. Now he’s a heretic in the conservative circles where he once was a star.

  • White House refuses to reveal ties with Monsanto Despite requests made under the Freedom of Information Act for correspondence out of the White House, the Obama administration is refusing to comply with calls to disclose discussions with Monsanto-linked lobbyists.

2012 Feb 28

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • The itinerant US left has found its home in the Occupy movement At the auction of foreclosed homes at Queens supreme court in New York, the official carefully explained the process for one person to make an offer on another person's misery. As the bidding was about to begin on what was once the home of Valencia Williams, around 20 people stood up and started to sing: "Mr Auctioneer / And all the people here / We're asking you to call off the sale right now / We're going to survive but we don't know how."

2012 Feb 29

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Tennessee Legislature Takes On Occupy Nashville! The Tennessee Legislature today passed a piece of legislation which is specifically, and uniquely purposed to disband Occupy Nashville, and to remove it from the one place of guaranteed free speech in our State. The Tennessee Legislature today passed the "Anti-Occupy" Bill, HB2638.

  • How The Gas Prices Are Manipulated By The Koch Brothers And Other Wall Street Players One of those players is the petrochemical multinational Koch Industries. Although oil extraction is a small part of the Koch’s oil business the company has major control over every other part of the market as its core venture is shipping crude oil, refining it, distributing it to retailers, then speculating on the future price. The company actively trades about 50 types of crude oil around the world and has trading operations in London, Geneva, Singapore, Houston, New York, Wichita, Rotterdam, and Mumbai.
    When future oil prices are expected to rise–which means when demand is expected to exceed supply–big banks and companies like Koch start buying up oil and storing it in massive containers both on land and offshore to lock in the oil for sale later at a set price.

  • What is #M1GS? In most European countries, May 1st is traditionally a ‘Workers’ day – a day of Labor Solidarity, and a public holiday. In Los Angeles, it’s a day to celebrate and march in support of im/migrant rights. In protest against the corruption of the worldwide marketplace, which has led to illegal foreclosures, mass unemployment, low wages, high taxes and a penalization of all those who do not own the ‘99%’ of the world’s resources, and in solidarity with the im/migrant movements of May 1st, OLA decided to declare May 1st, 2012 a People’s General Strike. Instead of calling upon unionized Labor to make a specific demand (illegal under Taft-Hartley), OLA is calling upon the people of Los Angeles and the United States of America to take this day away from school and the workplace, so that their absence makes their displeasure with this corrupt system be known.

  • Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal The US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which is being dubbed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. In the bill, Congress officially makes it illegal to trespass on the grounds of the White House, which, on the surface, seems not just harmless and necessary, but somewhat shocking that such a rule isn’t already on the books. The wording in the bill, however, extends to allow the government to go after much more than tourists that transverse the wrought iron White House fence.
    Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country.

  • http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/28/opinion/sanders-gas-speculation/index.html Gas prices approaching $4 a gallon on average are causing severe economic pain for millions of Americans. Pump prices spiked 5% in the past month alone. Forget what you may have read about the laws of supply and demand. Oil and gas prices have almost nothing to do with economic fundamentals. But there's another reason for the wild rise in gas prices. The culprit is Wall Street. Speculators are raking in profits by gambling in the loosely regulated commodity markets for gas and oil.

  • Belgium hit by general strike as EU leaders meet Belgium is holding its first general strike in more than six years in protest over austerity measures, as EU leaders meet for a summit in Brussels. The main train station in Brussels was closed while flights at Belgium's low cost airport Charleroi were cancelled.

  • Occupy London: The End of the Beginning Not long after midnight this morning, bailiffs finally moved in to evict the tents at the Occupy camp at St Paul’s Cathedral. The message is obvious. The City of London does not want a permanent witness to its excesses on the verge of the London Stock Exchange. It is over four months now since the first mass meetings on those iconic steps. Perhaps it is fitting that the location is best known for the “Fidelity Fiduciary Bank” scene in Mary Poppins. Now the tour guides will have another story to tell.

2012 Mar01

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Georgia Senate considers bill to criminalize union picketing Georgia already has some of the key anti-union laws that states like Wisconsin and Indiana have been fighting it out over in the past year. But that doesn't mean they can't try to pass even harsher anti-union laws. The state Senate is considering a bill that would basically make it illegal for unions to picket—or impossible for them to do so within tightened legal restrictions, anyway.

  • Exclusive: Homeland Security Kept Tabs on Occupy Wall Street The five-page report – contained in 5 million newly leaked documents examined by Rolling Stone in an investigative partnership with Wiki Leaks – goes on to sum up the history of Occupy Wall Street and assess its "impact" on everything from financial services to government facilities.

  • Bookmark the permalink. The Department of Homeland Security observed the Occupy Movement It is clear that this report prejudges a movement that has never committed itself to using violence to achieve political goals. Its commitment to non-violent methods is so unlike the official commitment to using violent methods when confronting the Occupy Movement. It is a well-established fact that law enforcement departments in numerous cities have used violent techniques to suppress the legal exercise of a citizen’s First Amendment rights. There are also reasons to believe that the Department of Homeland Security along with similar federal agencies coordinated the suppression of the Occupy Movement that occurred late last year. It is both ironic and unsurprising that the disorder surrounding the Occupy Movement originated mostly from the actions of the police.

  • To those who Occupy, we stand with you We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have joined in solidarity

  • Utah asks for repeal of NDAA’s indefinite detention provisions Utah is now the latest state to draft legislation specifically condemning the provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act that allow the president to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge.
    The Utah House is currently considering legislation that would publically put down Congress for drafting the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or the NDAA. The United States House and Senate passed the NDAA late last year before sending it to the White House for President Barack Obama to approve on December 31, 2011.

  • Occupy DC protesters arrested outside Monsanto Occupy DC said 12 of its members were arrested Wednesday while protesting outside the offices of agriculture giant Monsanto as part of a national day to "shut down the corporations." The group was protesting in solidarity with Occupy Portland, which called for a national day of action to shut down corporations with ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

  • VPF and Occupy the rise of the Occupy Movement, which is an expression of the frustration and the suffering resulting from the economic catastrophe, from its beginnings on Wall Street to an international movement with broad but inchoate aims has united those who ask for an end to war with those who ask for an end to inequality

2012 Mar02

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • SD college students stage walkout to protest cuts Students at San Diego's three major public colleges walked out of classes Thursday morning as part of what is billed as a nationwide rally against cuts in education funding. The National Day of Action to Defend the Right to Education is being coordinated by the Occupy Education movement.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • OWS Protesters Hold "Reboot" Rally in New York Hundreds of people gathered in New York’s Union Square Wednesday night for what organizers dubbed a "reboot" of the Occupy Wall Street movement for social and economic change. Occupy protests have lagged over the past two months amid the cold winter weather and a series of raids targeting encampments nationwide. Protesters said they hoped for a rejuvenated movement with the approaching spring.

  • Super PAC Campaign Spending Bashed, Defended Since the Supreme Court ruled in a case called "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", Super PAC spending has exploded to remarkable levels over that of the more limited, pre-ruling Political Action Committees.

  • Dozens arrested at occupy corporations On Wednesday dozens gathered in New York City to protest the influence money and corporations have on US politics. The occupiers gathered outside several banks and chanted slogans condemning US corporations influence on the US government. All across the nation people coordinated similar protests and over a dozen people were arrested in the largest coordinated effort since the fall.

  • Ben & Jerry's Donates to Occupy Wall Street Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry's are putting their hat in the Occupy Wall Street ring again. A new organization, Movement Resource Group, led by Ben & Jerry's Ben Cohen and former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg, is raising money to pump life back into the populist movement. As of now, the Wall Street Journal reports that they've raised up to $300,000 with a goal of $1.8 million.

  • Occupy Wall Street Gets Fat Ben & Jerry's Cash Infusion Representatives from the group met with Occupy Wall Street members on Sunday, and announced the plan to approve national grants of up to $25,000 with the approval of MRG and five OWS members. $150,000 will pay for a national office in New York, another $100,000 will pay for individual, targeted projects, and a smaller, undisclosed sum will be set aside for stipends for "core activists."
    Today's action is a rally in Union Square against police suppression of the movement. Rev. Stephen Phelps, civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, and musician Peter Yarrow will gather with activists in the north plaza of the park for a 5 p.m. rally before marching at 6 p.m.
    Tomorrow, more than 70 cities will participate in efforts to "Shut Down Corporations." (If you have an issue with OWS attempting to shut down some corporations while taking money from others, get in line.)
    Here in New York, demonstrations will begin at the Koch Industries building and the Pulitzer Fountain at 9 a.m., a march from Tudor City to Bryant Park at 10 a.m., and a Bank of America Teach-In with Rolling Stone reporter and "vampire squid"-coiner Matt Taibbi at 11 a.m. in Bryant Park. At noon, there will be an attempt to "shut down Bank of America branches, ending at B of A tower," which is right across the street from the park. More details are here and here.

2012 Mar03

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Student Walk-outs at Four Area Colleges Yesterday, March 1st, was the National Day of Action for Education. Students at four area colleges walked out in solidarity and staged marches, rallies, teach-ins and even a “sleep-in” at one campus.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • France's Sarkozy Holes Up In Bar To Escape Protesters Several hundred angry protesters booed President Nicolas Sarkozy, forcing him to take refuge in a cafe protected by riot police as he campaigned Thursday in France's southwest Basque country. Riot police surrounded the Bar du Palais in central Bayonne where Sarkozy holed up to get away from the protesters some of them Basque nationalists, others carrying posters of rival Socialist candidate Francois Hollande

  • Occupy invades “America’s storage shed” Faced with protest, Walmart unilaterally shuts down three warehouses in Southern California. It was in Mira Loma that a few hundred members of various Southern California Occupy movements converged at sunrise on Feb. 29 with the goal of shutting down a Walmart distribution center.
    They were joining in the one-day “Shut Down the Corporations” action staged nationwide against Fortune 500 companies like Walmart, Monsanto, Pfizer, Citibank, Koch Industries, BP, Bank of America, AT&T, Altria and Peabody Energy. According to “F29” organizers, these corporations are all big-money backers of the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC), which critics say “rewrite state laws that … often directly benefit huge corporations.”

  • Occupy Riverside:Police Protect Walmart from Occupiers Walmarts's largest distribution center was shut down today as Occupiers participating in the F29 protest against ALEC and their funding sources blocked their roads. The sheriff came out to disrupt the protest and instead made fools of themselves as they were unable to control the crowd in such an open area. In over 70 cities today an effort was made to raise awareness of the tentacles of ALEC strangling our way of life in the endless search for profit.

  • Ben and Jerry's and the occupy Movement Ben Cohen talked about his company's, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, plans to help fund the Occupy Wall Street movement. He also discussed campaign finance reform and the role of small businesses in the U.S., and he responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.

  • Our Corrupt Politics: It’s Not All Money Until 1853, bribing members of Congress was legal, and lobbyists did so with impunity. After bribes were outlawed, lobbyists realized that the law permitted them to pay congressmen “consulting fees,” which they did until well into the twentieth century. Worse, the politicians took bribes with impunity

  • Romney tax plan favors the richest of the rich The non-partisan Tax Policy Center published a fairly detailed analysis yesterday of Mitt Romney's new tax plan, and it led to a series of headlines like this one: "Wealthy would cash in under Romney tax plan."

  • UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego protests include traffic blockages, occupations Protesters at UC Santa Cruz started the day early, effectively shutting down campus operations such as traffic in and out of the campus from 4:30 a.m. until around 5:30 p.m. And rallies at UC San Diego took an unexpected turn when a group of protesters occupied a conference room in the campus administrative complex in the afternoon.

  • F29: Occupy Wall Street strikes back About 100 protesters rallied in Bryant Park against the the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Occupiers say that mega-companies like Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, BP, Monsanto, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart use ALEC to buy off legislators and craft legislation that puts corporate profit over the well-being of ordinary people.

  • Car plows through Occupy Education demonstrators in California Supported by a host of faculty and staff, several hundred University of California, Santa Cruz students gathered at the base of campus Thursday for a largely peaceful Occupy Education demonstration against state budget cuts and the university’s handling of the losses.

2012 Mar04

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Rochester protesters told to leave park by March 11 Protesters met with Rochester Mayor Tom Richards Friday morning with the hopes of getting a two-month extension but the mayor denied their request. Richards says the protesters must be out of Washington Square Park by March 11 or else the City is prepared to take police and/or legal action.

  • Audit Uncovers Extensive Flaws in Foreclosures An audit by San Francisco county officials of about 400 recent foreclosures there determined that almost all involved either legal violations or suspicious documentation, according to a report released Wednesday.

  • Noose tightens on Wall Street, Geithner questioned in NY Blacked out since it happened last week, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was in fact detained and questioned by law enforcement officials in New York. What is known and being sparsely reported by outlets like Bloomberg and Fox News is that the questioning is related to Timothy Geithner’s actions while head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. While in that roll, Geithner used his FED authority to influence the first multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout of the financially devastated AIG insurance company. The Secretary has already been accused publicly by numerous sources, including lawyers for the failed Lehman Brothers bank, of other legally questionable acts. Now, he’s reportedly being accused of directing AIG lawyers to hide certain embarrassing information about what AIG was going to do with its bailout money.

  • Bank of America is a “raging hurricane of theft and fraud” There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America. he first is that it’s corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors, and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake. The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging.

  • Occupy West Palm Beach protesters served notice to leave, most clear camp As of Friday morning, 12 tents were still pitched outside the building, located at the corner of Banyan Boulevard and Olive Avenue. By afternoon, just 5 tents remained and activists, part of the nationwide, left-leaning anti-corporate Occupy movement, were busy taking down banners and signs that had been hanging from the building. At least one activist said he had no plans to leave.

  • New York judge dismisses charges against Albany Occupy protesters An Albany judge has dismissed charges against 88 Occupy protesters, citing District Attorney David Soares' refusal to prosecute them. The defendants were charged with disorderly conduct and trespass in the weeks after Nov. 11, when dozens of protesters set up an encampment in Lafayette Park, across the street from the state Capitol and Albany City Hall. Soares announced early on that he would not prosecute non-violent protesters.

  • Where now for Dublin's Occupy protesters? THE OCCUPY DAME STREET protest, in Dublin, is a “semi-sovereign state”, according to a placard pinned to a makeshift hut in front of the Central Bank of Ireland. “The Central Bank has no jurisdiction here,” it asserts.

  • Occupy Wall Street Takes on Corporate Oligarchy The pro-democracy protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement overcame unfavorable weather and the absence of their former camps Wednesday to target the corporate oligarchy in 70 cities.

  • Bank of America In Trouble? It looks like Bank of America might have started circling the drain before the Occupy movement even had a chance to launch its campaign against the company. For weeks now there have been ominous signs of trouble at the bank, and yesterday we heard yet another dark piece of news.
    Last year, there was an uproar when Bank of America announced a plan to slap customers with a monthly $5 fee for debit card usage. The bank eventually backed off that plan when the public and some politicians cried foul.
    Now it seems the company is going to try to put a new package on the same crappy idea and sell it again. This time, the plan is to add charges that range from $6 to $25 a month.

2012 Mar05

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Reclaim UCSD Chancellor's Office UCSD students reclaimed a second space on campus this time the Chancellors conference room at the La Jolla Campus. Students are demanding closed libraries be reopened, funding for student programs to be increased, fair pay for workers as well as A COMPLETE REVERSAL OF THE FEE INCREASES, LAYOFFS, AND CUTS, GUARANTEED RETIREMENT SECURITY AND EQUAL BENEFITS FOR ALL WORKERS, A FULL INVESTIGATION INTO THE REGENTS' CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AN END TO UC ADMINISTRATIVE AND POLICE SURVEILLANCE, VIOLENCE, AND INTERVENTION, A REVISION OF CURRENT ADMISSIONS POLICIES TO LIFT BARRIERS FACED BY UNDERREPRESENTED STUDENTS OF COLOR, LGBT/QUEER STUDENTS, AND WORKING CLASS STUDENTS, ENCOURAGEMENT AND FACILITATION OF THE CREATION OF MORE STUDENT-RUN, SELF-ORGANIZED SPACES ON CAMPUS, EQUAL AND FULL ACCESS TO THE UNIVERSITY FOR UNDOCUMENTED STUDENTS.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • 'Warehouse Wage Slave' in the USA How many of us actually know what it takes to get products to us, what kind of labor practices go on at the shipping centers right here at home, in the US. Currently there are a number of lawsuits, one in particular against Amazon, where workers have complained of horrible conditions and being treated like "pieces of crap". Mother Jones' Mac Mc Clelland went to find out for herself by working at Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide in Mississippi. She joins the show to explain what it was really like.

  • Ben And Jerry Raise Dough For Occupy Movement A group of business leaders hope they can lift the Occupy movement with an infusion of cash. So far they've raised $300,000 with plans to add $1.5 million more. The movement resource group - a nonprofit that they've set up - wants to use the money to set up an office, create a website and give out project grants to members of the Occupy movement

2012 Mar06

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Bob McDonnell's Virginia On March 3, 2012, a group of peaceful protesters opposed to the Republican Party's War on Women were surrounded by riot police and dragged away under the guns of a SWAT team.

  • Pay Raises for City Council & Mayor Unanimously Rejected The proposed recommendations would have increased a councilmember’s salary from $75,386 to $175,000 and the mayor’s salary from $100,464 to $235,000 - effective on July 1, 2012 or 2013. Despite similar recommendations in previous years, the council has not approved a salary increase since 2003, although councilmember Carl De Maio pointed out that an increase was approved in May of 2008, but rescinded two days later after public outcry.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Inefficient Wall Street Wastes $280 Billion A Year Between 1980 and 2010, the U.S. financial industry nearly doubled in size, relative to the overall economy. Yet in terms of what the financial industry actually produces -- liquidity, assets, anything of measurable benefit to society -- the sector appears to be doing less these days than it used to.

  • Geithner arrested? 116 major bank resignations? What The Finance is this? Judge Napolitano testifies of Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve-insider Timothy Geither’s arrest in this 4-minute corporate news show. American Kabuki lists the daily-increasing bank resignations. David Wilcock and Benjamin Fulford explain and document history and deceit at the top of US and global finance, leading to current and imminent arrests.

  • US Congress passes authoritarian anti-protest law A bill passed Monday in the US House of Representatives and Thursday in the Senate would make it a felony—a serious criminal offense punishable by lengthy terms of incarceration—to participate in many forms of protest associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests of last year. Several commentators have dubbed it the “anti-Occupy” law, but its implications are far broader.

  • Nov 14US Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase

  • Romney on student debt: Join the military Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday told a high school senior not to expect any help from the government for college tuition unless he joined the military.

  • US Congress expands authoritarian anti-protest law A bill passed Monday in the US House of Representatives and Thursday in the Senate would expand existing anti-protest laws that make it a felony—a serious criminal offense punishable by a lengthy prison term—to “enter or remain in” an area designated as “restricted.”

2012 Mar07

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • OCCUPELLA WOMEN'S CHORUS CHANGES LYRICS TO SEND MESSAGE There’s a new all volunteer female chorus in town with more gigs than they can handle. The “Occupella Chorus” sings familiar tunes, but rewords the lyrics to convey the message of social and economic injustice. A sample is “Occupy Your Mind” sung to tune of “Do Re Mi:” “Occupy your mind today. Learn what’s really going on. Me - an individual, Against a corporation.”

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Thousands march on Capitol to protest cuts in college funding Thousands of students and activists marched through Sacramento's streets and rallied outside the state Capitol on Monday to protest cuts to California's colleges and universities. "They say cut back, we say fight back!" the students chanted while waving signs saying "fund education, not war" and "cuts in education never heal."

  • Did The Fed Help Banks While Ignoring The Risks? Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has shrugged off warnings and let the largest U.S. financial firms pay tens of billions of dollars in dividends to shareholders, instead of putting aside money as capital in case a new financial crisis hits. Investigative reporter Jesse Eisinger details how the Fed made a critical oversight decision in the wake of the financial crisis — despite objections from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. His report was published jointly by Pro Publica and The Atlantic online.

  • Student loans surpass auto, credit card debt Student loan debt stands at $870 billion nationally, surpassing the nation’s outstanding balance on auto loans ($730 billion) and credit cards ($693 billion), according to Grading Student Loans, which is not a formal report so much as a scholarly blog post published by the economists at the New York Fed

  • 72 arrested during ‘occupy the Capitol’ student protest Authorities arrested 68 students and activists who refused to leave the state Capitol on Monday evening after an hours-long protest over cuts to higher education. The demonstration, billed by some as an "occupy the Capitol" act and supported by a loose coalition of student groups and labor unions, was the latest sign of simmering discontent over steady hikes in the cost of attending state universities and community colleges

2012 Mar08

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • City council rejects salary increase For the third time, the San Diego City Council has rejected the salary settin commission's recommendation to more than double their pay. Kevin Rambo and Ray Lutz commented.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Attorney General Eric Holder Defends Legality of Targeted Killings of U.S. Citizens Overseas Holder’s speech amounted to a broad defense of the administration’s claimed expansive authority to kill its own citizens, far from any battlefield and without judicial review or oversight of legal standards. "While Holder acknowledges that the Constitution requires ‘due process’ before the government takes the life of one of its own citizens,” Shamsi argues, “he says it is up to the E...xecutive Branch alone, without judicial review, to determine what process is due and to make that decision without any oversight — and that’s simply not the case in our constitutional system of checks and balances.” The ACLU is suing the White House to disclose its legal memos that justify targeted killings."

  • Will Occupy be heard from? Whatever happened to Occupy Wall Street? Are you folks still out there? Yes, the economy seems to be improving and thus the power of your message has been slightly blunted. But as a political force that could rally the nation on behalf of the 99%, who tend not to contribute huge sums to campaigns and so have less influence than their numbers deserve, you're still badly needed.

  • Harvard, Yale Now Cheaper Than CA State Schools. This Is Why Students Protest. According to the Bay Area News Group, a "family of four -- married parents, a high-school senior and a 14-year-old child -- making $130,000 a year," with typical financial aid, would pay around $17,000 for tuition, room and board and other expenses, if their child went to Harvard. However, if their child attended a Cal State, they would pay $24,000. Going to the University of California, Santa Cruz would cost around $33,000; at UC Berkeley would be about $19,500.

2012 Mar09

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Bob Filner Says San Diego Needs To Make A Clean Sweep At City Hall He’s served on the San Diego Unified School Board and on the San Diego City Council. He was first elected to Congress in 1992 and has held that seat ever since, representing South San Diego and Imperial County. He’s served as chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and is now the ranking member. But Filner said he’s leaving that behind and running for mayor because he’s ready for a change.

  • The Dire Limits of Health Care Carranza hadn’t been kicked out of school due to academic or disciplinary issues. Instead, on his 21st birthday, Medi-Cal cut his services, which included round-the-clock nursing care that he needs because he has muscular dystrophy.

  • Susan Burkland - Women Occupy - Rally for Women's Rights Interview with Susan Burkland from Women Occupy at the Rally for Women's Rights on March 8, 2012, International Women's Day in front of the San Diego Federal Courthouse. Susan discusses the rally and issues affecting women today

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable it says it has the right to seize any .com, .net and .org domain name because the companies that have the contracts to administer them are based on United States soil, according to Nicole Navas, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.

  • Many forms of Occupy protests subjected to new bill making protests illegal A bill passed last week in the US House of Representatives and the Senate would make it a felony to participate in many forms of protest associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests of last year. Several commentators have dubbed it the “anti-Occupy” law, but its implications are far broader

  • 55 Vermont Towns Affirm: 'Corporations Are Not People' With some results still yet to come in, reports confirm that at least 55 towns in Vermont approved municipal resolutions calling for an end to big money's dominance in US politics and calling for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's 'Citizens United' decision that has opened the floodgates for secretive, unlimited campaign spending in US elections.

  • Can OWS Bring Down Bank of America? Bank of America is almost totally bankrupt and is probably going to need a bailout sometime in the next year. It is already dependent on taxpayer money. This time around, there’s still time to prevent another bailout. The only way to prevent this from happening is through starting a massive public campaign to create a political climate in which an educated and empowered populace recognizes that this bank has already failed and must be broken apart. If we can pull this off, it would send a signal to the financial industry that it has to start being accountable to the public. From there, we would have a chance to change the whole system.

2012 Mar10

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • International Women’s Day Rallying Cry: “We Will Remember in November!” I arrived at the Federal Building while the San Diego Occupellas were still practicing. This Women Occupy group rewrites the lyrics of well know songs with punchy occupy themes. As one of the speakers would later point out, 99% of women use contraception, which is just one more reason to be part of the Occupy movement.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy City Council Charlotte City Council votes to eliminate the open public forum in which citizens can address the council. It's not your speakers, I've amped up the sound after Michael Zytkow (first speaker) because Warren Cooksey whispers to Michael Barnes, "I'll get him his 7 cents back if he wants it." (There's a mic in front of you, dummy) Just before Scottie Wingfield speaks you can hear Mayor Foxx say, "Here we go, here we go." You can also enjoy Michael Barnes giving a most ignorant response after statements made by Jason Bargert. This is your city council, Charlotte. Snide, arrogant, corrupt, and without a care in the world they stamp out the public voice. This video was the ONLY business meeting not posted for download amongst the others on the city council webpage because of the statements made. They have willfully suppressed the availability of this footage for reasons that are obvious upon viewing/hearing it. Please be aware and appreciate that a great deal of time and effort went into making this footage widely available to the public.

  • By standing up to Rush Limbaugh’s slur, Sandra Fluke shows how sex positivity is recharging feminism. Sandra Fluke has pointed out that Rush Limbaugh tried to silence her when he called her a slut and a prostitute last week. But the oldest, hoariest trick for shutting women up didn’t work this time. Bolstered by her experience as an activist and a pitch-perfect call of support from President Obama, Fluke soldiered on in her efforts to persuade Georgetown University to include contraception in its package of health care coverage.

  • The Great Vermont Uprising Against Corporate Personhood By Thursday morning, sixty-four towns reported they had moved to amend the US Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United ruling—as well as the false construct that says, in the words of Mitt Romney, “corporations are people, my friend.”

2012 Mar11

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Fukushima Remembered As We Protest at San Onofre on Sunday, March 11th On the one-year anniversary of Japan’s nuclear nightmare at Fukushima, San Diego peace, anti-nuke, environmental, and civil libertarian activists will be converging on our own nuclear- nightmare-to-be – the San Onofre power plant. The action will be this Sunday, March 11th, from 1 to 3pm.

  • Super PACs: Politically Speaking What kind of impacts do Super PACS and their contributions have on democracy? Certified public accountant April Boling and political accountant Benjamin Katz chimed in on one of the most politically inflated political football.

  • Update on Hex To all who came out to the trial and offered solidarity and all other supporters of Brother Hexagon, you will all be pleased to hear that victory is at hand in this matter. Brother Hexagon's attorney Laura Sheppard informs us of the following: "Update: The prosecution declined to re-try this case, and has dismissed it. Fight those illegal arrests, we CAN WIN!!" There will be NO retrial!!!

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Actions around the World The 11 March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and related melt down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has led to great suffering for the people of Japan and has increased radioactive contamination across the globe.

  • Cross-country Occupiers make stop in Joshua Tree Occupy Walk USA members take a break and pose for photos in Yucca Valley Thursday, March 8. Back row from left: Jason Brock, Adam Peck, Michael Oren, Eugene Leafty and Steven Kong. In front are Richard Finn, left, and Britten Dodds. Not pictured: Danny Johnson and William Terzin.

  • [[http://obrag.org/?p=56114]["A funny thing happened on the way to stop Obama from signing HR 347 …”

  • How Big a Deal is H.R. 347, That “Criminalizing Protest” Bill? Recent days have seen significant concern about an unassuming bill with an unassuming name: the "Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011." The bill, H.R. 347, has been variously described as making the First Amendment illegal or criminalizing the Occupy protests. The truth is more mundane, but the issues raised are still of major significance for the First Amendment

  • Texas law blocks funding for care at Planned Parenthood Delia Henry was tired but had no idea her blood sugar was high when she went to Planned Parenthood for her annual gynecological exam. The clinic referred her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with diabetes. The 31-year-old nursing student said she would have skipped the exam since she has no insurance, but she had just signed up for Texas' Women's Health Program, which provides cancer screenings, contraceptives and basic health care to about 130,000 low-income women through Medicaid.

  • What If the “Broken Windows” Theory Were Applied to Wall Street? James Q. Wilson, who died recently, was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called "broken windows." The metaphor explains what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building

2012 Mar12

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Anti-nuclear protest took place at San Onofre Plant Back here in the US, anti-nuclear protestors made their voices heard at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. They say the plant is not equipped to handle a large earthquake and that we would be facing a disaster like the one in Japan if one were to strike. (Video)

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupiers set up living room in Bank of America lobby A crew of occupiers makes a home of a Bank of America lobby with a couch, a coffee table, a rug and a potted plant. "Bank of America took our homes so we though we'd move in here!" Join them March 15 as America turns the tables on the nation's largest bank!

2012 Mar13

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Hundreds Rally to Remember Fukushima, Protest San Onofre Hundreds of protesters converged near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Reactors there remain in a state of continuing high-level meltdown.

  • Rally at San Onofre nuclear power plant draws hundreds More than 200 activists held a peaceful rally Sunday outside the gates of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station to commemorate the anniversary of the damage at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from a magnitude-9 earthquake, and to raise awareness about nuclear power in California.

  • Anti-Nuke Rally at San Onofre Commemorating Fukushima Largest In Years Hundreds rallied in front of the San Onofre nuclear reactors on Sunday, March 11th, in commemoration of the disaster exactly one year ago at the Fukushima plant in Japan. And two speakers from Japan addressed the crowd and expressed appreciation for Americans’ solidarity during the warm afternoon near a cliff just off the Pacific.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Wall Street:“I felt like I had been arrested for a thought crime” Protesters arrested while blocks away from the protests. Their charges were thrown out. But it is important to recognize the impact such spurious arrests have on peoples perception of freedom to assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances. Who wants to risk arrest for not only attending a protest but for simply planning to attend? In making this arrest the police have shown they are not interested in maintaining order but in the suppression of dissent.

  • NYPD intimidation of #OWS and the architecture of NYC surveillance A number of Occupy Wall Street protesters are planning to sue the NYPD for what they are calling pre-emptive arrests based on "thought crimes." The activists say that the NYPD has placed them under surveillance at their homes and work spaces, and that the police have arrested them without cause and asked inappropriate questions about their political activity.

2012 Mar14

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Group Plans to Protest Issa Fundraiser Protesters organized by Women Occupy San Diego have vowed to picket a fundraiser for Congressman Darrell Issa tonight at the Shadowridge Country Club in Vista. Issa “recently held a panel investigation on contraception but refused to allow women to speak. Picketers want Issa to know they will make their views heard, despite his best efforts to ignore them,” alleges a release being distributed by the group.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Citigroup's CEO Gets a 14,900,000 Percent Raise Vikram Pandit is officially no longer Citi's $1 man. Whether he should be a $15 million one is the question. Yesterday, the bank disclosed that it paid its CEO nearly $14.9 million in cash and options in 2011. That was up from a dollar the year before. Back in 2009, Pandit said he would take a salary of $1 until Citigroup (C) returned to profitability. In fact, Pandit stuck with the meager check longer than he had to. Citi made money in 2010. So you can't really fault the guy for taking more this year.

  • Protesters from Occupy DC march Photo - march to the White House in Washington on March 12, 2012 against legislation known as House Resolution (HR) 347 which critics say restricts freedom of speech and assembly.

  • Occupy DC protests H.R. 347 On March 12th, 2012 at 7pm protesters from Occupy DC gathered at Mc Pherson Square with the purpose of voicing their discomfort with the signing, by President Obama, of H.R. 347.

  • CODEPINK 'Busts Up' Bank of America CEO Speech Thursday, March 8th, three female "CODEPINK" protesters stormed the stage in a Waldorf Astoria ballroom, stripped to their bras, and began yelling at a room full of bankers who just moments before had been listening to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. The women had the slogan "Bust up Bank of America" painted on their chests, according to an Occupy press release.

  • Bust Up Bank of America This content may contain material flagged by You Tube's user community that may be inappropriate for some users. To view this video please verify you are 18 or older by signing in or signing up.

  • Bawdy protesters bust up Brian’s Bof A speech It’s the most action Bank of America shareholders have seen in a while. Yesterday, Bof A chief Brian Moynihan was ambushed at a conference in Midtown by women donning pink wigs and feather boas and demanding a breakup of the bank.

  • Busted for Busting Out at Bank of America Stripping Protestors In Pink Bras Crashed Bank Of America CEO Brian Moynihan's Speech,” declared Business Insider on March 8, showing Moynihan’s stern photo with a pink bra playfully dangling in the air beside him.

  • PART I Infiltration to Disrupt, Divide and Mis-direct are Widespread in Occupy as protesters arrived at the museum two people ran out in front, threatening the security guards and causing them to pepper spray protesters and tourists. Patrick Howley, an assistant editor for the American Spectator, wrote a column bragging about his role as an agent provocateur. A few days later we uncovered the second infiltrator when he was urging people on Freedom Plaza to resist police with force.

  • Part II Infiltration of Political Movements is the Norm, Not the Exception in the United States How many agents or infiltrators can we expect to see inside a movement? One of the most notorious “police riots” was the 1968 Democratic Party Convention. Independent journalist Yasha Levine writes: “During the 1968 protests of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which drew about 10,000 protesters and was brutally crushed by the police, 1 out of 6 protesters was a federal undercover agent. According to, Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, the goal of COINTELPRO was also to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups. FBI field operatives were directed to:
    1. Create a negative public image for target groups by surveiling activists and then releasing negative personal information to the public.
    2. Break down internal organization by creating conflicts by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters to try to create conflicts.
    3. Create dissension between groups by spreading rumors that other groups were stealing money.
    4. Restrict access to public resources by pressuring non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support.
    5. Restrict the ability to organize protests through agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests.
    6. Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities by character assassinations, false arrests, surveillance.

  • Militarized Law Enforcement Raids Occupy Miami Before 3-13-2012 Action As we were leaving to do a march and rally multiple trucks and cars filled with SWAT looking officers with military armament came and drew their weapons on us and proceeded to round up all Occupiers and tenants and put them on the ground along with searching us and most rooms in the building. They had assault rifles and tactical shotguns. They were accompanied by FBI Agents and City of Miami police. These people were extremely violent and looked anxious to use their weapons so this first video was taken under my leg. This whole situation is very strange. Police state is nearly upon us.

2012 Mar15

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • May 1, 2012: A Day Without the 99 Percent! The Occupy movement is rolling out a new tactic. It is building on several months of successes and aims to take it ‘up a notch’. May 1st — May Day — is the World Labor Day honoring the workers killed in Chicago in 1886, striking for the eight hour day. It is also the day each year that working class solidarity is reaffirmed and our demands for a better world renewed. Occupy is organizing for it, everywhere, as the next major step.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Dozens Of Vermont Communities Vote To End Corporate Personhood Mitt Romney may have won the Vermont primary on Super Tuesday, but his “corporations are people, my friends” line took a hit, as more than two dozen cities across the state voted overwhelmingly in support of amending the US Constitution to eliminate “corporate personhood” that was introduced with the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court.

  • Exodus: California Tax Revenue Plunges by 22% While California Governor Brown promises strong economic growth is just around the corner, Chaing proves that the best way for Sacramento politicians to hurt the economy and thereby generate lower tax revenue, is to have the highest tax rates in the nation. California politicians seem delusional in their continued delusion that high taxes have not savaged the State’s economy. Each month’s disappointment is written off as due to some one-time event.

  • What Has Occupy Been Up To? 6 Great Actions You Can't Miss This Spring One of the big new projects to come out of the winter is the Fight BAC (Bank of America) campaign. The message of this campaign is beautifully simple: Bank of America's financial problems have led it to being propped up by the government and in the coming year it might need a bailout. Instead of being bailed out it should be broken up into smaller banks that have more community control. Occupy Wall Street has called for a general strike in New York City on May 1 and for it to be thought of as a “day without the 99 percent.”

  • Goldman Sachs director in London quits 'toxic' bank A manager at US banking giant Goldman Sachs in London has quit, saying he could no longer work there "in good conscience". Greg Smith, who headed Goldman's equity derivatives business in Europe, said it was common to hear talk of ripping off their "muppet" clients.

  • Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

  • Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out? At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.

  • The rich are different from you and me LIFE at the bottom is nasty, brutish and short. For this reason, heartless folk might assume that people in the lower social classes will be more self-interested and less inclined to consider the welfare of others than upper-class individuals, who can afford a certain noblesse oblige. A recent study, however, challenges this idea. Experiments by Paul Piff and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, reported this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest precisely the opposite. It is the poor, not the rich, who are inclined to charity.

  • 'The Lunch Tray' Responds to Beef Industry Defenses of 'Pink Slime' two former microbiologists at USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service - now federal whistleblowers - have vociferously protested the agency's controversial decision to classify BLBT as "meat." In a 2002 email to colleagues, one of these scientists wrote: "I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling." That revelation ought to be at least some cause for consumer concern.

  • Occupy Movement: Nonviolent Communications 101 Part 1 We are developing a series of eRadio Shows to facilitate Nonviolent Communications. Please join in the discussion as experts from all over the world will be exploring the benefits of nonviolent communications. This is an opportunity for Occupy Movement members to learn about nonviolent communications from experts

2012 Mar 16

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Women Voter's Show Their Anger: Occupy San Diego Protests Darrell Issa Fundraiser Beginning at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 13, 2012, seventy-five citizens from the North County area of San Diego, Calif. converged on the Shadowridge Country Club, in the town of Vista, where Rep. Issa was scheduled to speak to G.O.P. supporters later that evening. Low level republican aspirants could hear the congressman speak at the $150.00 a plate dinner. Attendees with greater expectations were eligible to attend a semi- private gathering for $ 5,000.00 a piece.

  • MWD Accused Of Forming A Shadow Government The San Diego County Water Authority released hundreds of documents this week that it says show members of the Metropolitan Water District formed a “secret society” to deliberately raise the water rates paid by San Diego customers.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Students lead living wage protest at University of Virginia amid climate of intimidation “Supervisors [of contract employees] reportedly told people, ‘If you go organize or go to a meeting, you’ll be fired,’” said Susan Fraiman, a professor at the University of Virginia and a long-time activist for living wages for staff and contract workers on campus. In a right-to-work state like Virginia, that might not be illegal — but, according to an advisory opinion issued to UVA in 2006 by then-Attorney General (now Governor) Bob Mc Donnell (R), taking into account the wages your contractors are paying the employees that work on campus when awarding contracts might be.

  • GOP led Wisconsin legislature votes to ban private abortion coverage The Republican led Wisconsin assembly voted to ban private insurance coverage for abortions and mandate abstinence-only sex education classes Wednesday morning, according to The Green Bay Post Gazette. The Assembly voted 61-34 Tuesday evening to ban abortion coverage from a health insurance exchange set up by the Affordable Care Act in 2014.

  • Why I am leaving the Empire, by Darth Vader After almost 12 years, first as a summer intern, then in the Death Star and now in London, I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its massive, genocidal space machines. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

  • http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml After resigning from Goldman Sachs with guns blazing and ink burning, former executive Greg Smith can guarantee there will be no love lost for him on Wall Street. Smith, who published a widely-discussed op-ed in Wednesday morning’s New York Times, has been mocked and doubted.

  • Wisconsin Activists Convicted Of Misdemeanors For Peaceful Sit-In August 25, 2011. This was the day that most state workers saw their paychecks go down by about 15%. Naturally, being as we live in Wisconsin, there were several rallies scheduled on this day. The last rally got done at approximately five fifty, ten minutes before the close of the Wisconsin State Capitol. At the end of the rally everyone marched in the building as police held doors open for us. I was busy trying to get some friends out of jail who had been arrested for driving down a “restricted” street. At about 6:20, when the building had already been closed for twenty minutes, I got in. What I found was about a thousand people in the rotunda. All were shouting and chanting and it was a very jubilant occasion. At about 6:45, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs requested that everyone leave

  • San Onofre Nuclear Plant Probed By The Feds After Radiation Leak A nuclear reactor on the California coast will remain shut down indefinitely while a team of federal inspectors determines why several relatively new tubes became so frail that tests found they could rupture and release radioactive water, a federal official said Thursday. "This is a significant issue," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Lara Uselding. "A tube rupture is really the concern. ... That's what we don't want to happen."

2012 Mar 17

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Denver Police Unjustly Harass and Arrest Occupiers Over the past two weeks the Denver police department as well as several other agencies have stepped up their harassment of occupiers, especially those who are houseless. They have taken it beyond just arresting those associated with Occupy Denver, they are trying to create an atmosphere of fear at Civic Center Park. They know our numbers will grow as Spring arrives and they are doing what they can to scare people away and silence dissent.

  • Occupy Protesters Injured, Arrested in Police Confrontation “Chaotic” is the way Occupy the Midwest protesters described their Thursday night confrontation with police in a south St. Louis park. Two were injured and a number of them were arrested. KMOX’s Michael Calhoun was on the scene and said fourteen were cuffed and put into the back of police vans.

  • Dozens Protest Bank of America in "Fight BAC" Action Dozens of people rallied in New York on Thursday to protest Bank of America for its foreclosure practices and billions in government aid. At least three people were arrested after demonstrating at a Bank of America branch. "The message today was very simple. Bank of America is a criminal institution that has stolen $230 billion in bailout money alone from the American people. They’ve stolen our homes. They steal from taxpayers and kill the environment. So today took our homes to Bank of America. We’re starting a campaign to break up the bank, to end the Bank of America corporation, to take its assets and redistribute them to institutions that will be accountable to the American people. Because it’s our money. It’s our trillions of dollars they’ve been using to fly on jets, to buy their houses while they kick us out of ours. So we’re going to take our money, and put it into institutions that are good for our people, and not institutions that hurt, destroy, and rob from our people." Video starts @ 11:35 minutes.

  • Occupy The Midwest Attacked By Police This weekend, Occupy Wisconsin is covering The Occupy The Midwest Regional Conference, which started sadly tonight with St. Louis Police beating peaceful protesters with batons and arresting several at an encampment for Conference participants.

  • Occupy the Media—and the Message From its inception, the Occupy movement has had a contentious relationship with the mainstream media. On September 17, a few hours into the first day of the occupation, as a couple of hundred people assembled in Zuccotti Park, some demonstrators were already complaining of a “media blackout.” I was there, as an enthusiastic participant, yet even I wasn’t convinced the event was particularly newsworthy: in May more than 10,000 people had marched through nearby streets airing similar grievances; a month later protesters camped for two weeks outside City Hall as part of a protest called Bloombergville. Yet accusations flew through the Twittersphere. The traditional media are ignoring us! Why aren’t we big news?

  • You've Got To Read This Explosive Letter About A Coverup At The CBO The WSJ broke a big story today about an inquiry into shady behavior at the Congressional Budget Office. At the heart of the story is former CBO economist Lan T. Pham, who says she was fired for sharing her pessimistic outlook for banking and housing sectors in 2010. Pham made this explosive claim in a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley

2012 Mar 18

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Free Speech/Protesting Is Now A Felony Punishable By Jail The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from infringing upon the freedom of speech, the freedom of association and the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Speech is language and other forms of expression; and association and petition connote physical presence in reasonable proximity to those of like mind and to government officials, so as to make your opinions known to them.

  • Occupy Wall Street moving into phase two? Over the weekend the Occupy Wall Street movement will turn six months old. The movement has had many different messages, but all protesters agree that something in American needs to change. Although the movement has no real leader many individuals have stood out to help promote the ideas of Occupy. One of this is Jesse La Greca, activist and writer for Daily Kos, he joins us to update us on the movement.

2012 Mar 19

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • 7 Tubes Fail Pressure Tests At San Onofre Four more tubes that carry radioactive water at a Southern California nuclear power plant failed pressure tests, bringing the number to seven and prompting new safety concerns, authorities disclosed.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy protest anniversary ends with police sweep Dozens of police officers cleared the park where the Occupy movement was born six months ago and made several arrests after hundreds of protesters returned in an anniversary observance and defiantly resisted calls to clear out.

  • Dozens arrested at Occupy's 6-month anniversary rally The park remained closed on Sunday with a sprinkling of police surrounding it, keeping the area clear while crews cleaned up following Saturday night's protests. A sweep just before midnight, when roughly 300 demonstrators had gathered in the park, capped a day of protests and marching in lower Manhattan.

  • 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis The son of a butcher, Mozilo co-founded Countrywide in 1969 and built it into the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. Countrywide wasn't the first to offer exotic mortgages to borrowers with a questionable ability to repay them

  • Kansas to Pregnant Women: "A Little Lie from Your Doctor Won't Hurt You" But now politicians in Kansas are giving pregnant women and their partners something new to worry about. Buried in a sweeping anti-abortion bill is a provision that would immunize a doctor who discovers that a baby will be born with a devastating condition and deliberately withholds that information from his patient. That's right. If the bill passes, a doctor who opposes abortion could decide to lie about the results of your blood tests, your ultrasound, your cvs or your amnio. Lie to you so that you won't have information that might lead you to decide to end your pregnancy or that might lead you to learn more about your child's condition so that you are prepared to be the best parent you can be to your child.

  • Why the Rich Are Getting Richer curious thing has happened in the midst of all this misery. The wealthiest Americans, among them presumably the very titans of global finance whose misadventures brought about the financial meltdown, got richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer. In 2009, the average income of the top five percent of earners went up, while on average everyone else's income went down. This was not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a 40-year trend of ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top one percent has increased from roughly eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today.

  • Greece develops cashless, Euro-free currency in tight economy In recent weeks, Theodoros Mavridis has bought fresh eggs, tsipourou (the local brandy: beware), fruit, olives, olive oil, jam, and soap. He has also had some legal advice, and enjoyed the services of an accountant to help fill in his tax return. None of it has cost him a euro, because he had previously done a spot of electrical work – repairing a TV, sorting out a dodgy light – for some of the 800-odd members of a fast-growing exchange network in the port town of Volos, midway between Athens and Thessaloniki.

  • Massive solar tower in Arizona to be world's 2nd largest building Plans for a massive solar tower are close to becoming a reality right in the middle of the Arizona desert. The relatively new technology uses turbines to force air heated by the sun up through a 2,600-foot chimney, creating electricity. The solar tower will generate more than 1 million megawatt hours, which would be enough for 150,000 homes, according to the company's president, Chris Davey.

2012 Mar 20

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • San Diego City Council Considers Corporate Power Grabs and Give-away of Convention Center As mentioned [last Thursday - March 15], it’s going to be a busy couple of days at the City Council for gigantic corporate power grabs, and it won’t just be whether we will require the mayor to distribute hundreds of millions of taxdollars to campaign contributors. Also on Tuesday [March 20], the council will be considering whether to give away control of Convention Center booking to a consortium of hoteliers and private tourist and business interests.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Wall Street- M17- Zucotti Park - NYPD Arrests On March 17 , OWS demonstrators gathered for their Six month anniversary, were people re-occupied Zucatti Park. This footage begins around 9 O'clock,and shows the gathering that took place along with many arrests.The NYPD orders all to evacuate in order for the park to be "Cleaned". Many stayed and were then arrested. Here are those events.

  • Solar power station in Spain works at night A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night. The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.

  • Welcome to the American Spring This week, the American Spring began. You may not have heard much about it yet, because the media seem mostly to have missed it (much as they missed the original occupation of Wall Street at first). But the seeds of the occupation have started to flower into a movement reborn. Last night, the cracks in the surface began to show. Hundreds of mostly young people came together for a few brief, beautiful hours to celebrate the six-month anniversary of the occupation of Wall Street.

  • Mitt Romney Waldorf-Astoria Fundraiser Sparks Occupy Wall Street '1% For Romney' Protest This will be a fun filled 1%ers for Romney rally with people dressed to the nines, ball gowns, suits, top hats and tiaras – and signs that echo Romney’s own words, “Corporations are People too!” as well as “Buy Your Own Politician. Romney’s Mine.” We’ll highlight the nightmare of corporate personhood and the selling of our democracy to the top bidder. (+Photos)

  • Police Arrest 73 in Occupy Wall Street Crackdown As Protesters Mark Six Months of Uprising Michael Moore led hundreds of people from the Left Forum conference to Zuccotti Park on Saturday where hundreds had gathered to re-occupy the park to mark six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September and launched protests around the world that gave voice to "the 99 percent." That night, New York City police officers cleared the park making at least 73 arrests

  • Occupy Miami Raided, SWAT Team Draws Weapons on Children During the raid, protesters claim police drew their weapons on children, forced a 57-year-old diabetic woman onto the ground, and allegedly harassed at least one individual, Ramy Mahmoud, during an informal interrogation.

  • Wall Street firms may rent out Fannie foreclosures Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae is selling foreclosed homes in bulk to big investors -- like hedge funds and private equity firms -- who will then rent them out. That according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Here to talk about this with us about this is The Journal's Nick Timiraos.

  • Occupy Miami's Overtown Safehouse Raided by Dozens of Miami Police With Assault Rifles More than two dozen cops swarmed Occupy Miami's Overtown safehouse yesterday afternoon after responding to what appears to have been a bogus terrorism tip The raid was the second on Occupy Miami in the past six weeks. On January 31, Miami-Dade cops evicted protesters from Government Center. This time it was City of Miami police officers that arrived in SWAT vans and emerged with their assault rifles drawn

  • After Occupy Wall Street Police Violence, Council Members Speak Out by Ydanis Rodriguez. We, the undersigned elected officials, are deeply concerned with the excessive level of force employed by the NYPD on the night of March 17th, both in evicting peaceful demonstrators from Zuccotti Park and in arresting those who marched following the eviction.

  • Occupy Miami Talks Overtown SWAT Raid Members of Occupy Miami's Overtown Camp talk about the tactical police sweep, detainment, and interrogation through their perfectly legal camp in Overtown

2012 Mar 21

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Pension Reform Not What Will Save San Diego Money In fact, it’s estimated that over 30 years, the move could cost the city $13 million. That’s because of an assumed employer match of 9.2 percent and a new death and disability program for future employees to replace one in the current plan. The savings to the city in the pension initiative are considerable: $963 million over 30 years. But they come exclusively from proposed salary freezes.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Corruption plagues all 50 states: study There is currently no state in America with a great track record in dealing with corruption and transparency issues in its government, according to a detailed study by an investigation group released Monday.

  • Tea party joins unions in opposition to Georgia anti-picketing bill The Atlanta Tea Party Patriots have joined labor unions and environmentalists in opposition to legislation that would outlaw some types of mass picketing. “The bill at face value, appears to be geared toward labor unions, but the devil is in the details,” the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots said in an email to members. “It clearly adds a ‘person or organization’, which could include not only big labor, but also Tea Party activists, those protesting outside abortion clinics, or many other scenarios

  • #OWS Calls for NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly To Resign Yesterday, members of the New York City Council decried the NYPD´s behavior on the March 17th re-eviction of Liberty Square. Today, Occupy Wall Street will call for the resignation of NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly for authorizing brutality and extreme abuse of police power. At 11am ET, we will march from Foley Square to a 12 noon press conference at 1 Police Plaza. Speakers will include victims of NYPD´s racist ¨Stop and Frisk¨ policies and targeted harassment of the Muslim community, as well as survivors of NYPD violence both within and outside Occupy Wall Street.

  • China’s spending on renewable energy soars World’s biggest polluter spends £4bn a year on wind and solar power generation in single region as it aims to cut fossil fuel use. The remote, wind-blasted desert of northwestern Gansu could be the most unloved, environmentally abused corner of China. It is home to the country’s first oilfield and several of the coalmines and steel factories that have contributed to China’s notoriety as the planet’s biggest polluter and carbon dioxide emitter.

  • Mandatory ultrasound measure approved by Idaho senate The state Senate in Idaho today passed a bill mandating an ultrasound for any woman seeking an abortion. The legislation prompted a protest on the capitol steps a couple of weeks ago, and last week a senate hearing room was packed as the State Affairs Committee approved the bill, 7-2, along party lines. The final tally was 23-12 in favor of the new ultrasound requirement. The measure now goes to the Idaho House where there are 57 Republicans and 13 Democrats

  • Sharp Response Meets Return of Protesters On Monday, George E. Packard, a retired Episcopal bishop, between City Councilmen Jumaane D. Williams, left, and Ydanis Rodriguez, protested the arrests Saturday night in Zuccotti Park. Now, with Occupy Wall Street’s resurgence, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s response to the protest movement has not been ambivalent. Asked at a news conference on Monday if he had a strategy to prevent large-scale arrests of protesters, Mr. Bloomberg said: “You want to get arrested? We’ll accommodate you.”

  • GMO Protesters Shut Down California Monsanto While proposed government regulation, previous legal action, and the threat of agricultural collapse does not seem to affect Monsanto’s daily operations, it appears protesters can and do. Dozens of protesters disrupted Monsanto’s California office in Davis, an area close to Sacramento, through vocal activism and calls to shut down the biotech giant with deep known ties into the United States government. Braving the rain, the dozens of protesters — not thousands — were successful in shutting down the entire office for the day.

2012 Mar 22

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • NYPD Riot Cops Remove Occupy Protesters from Union Square Occupy Wall Street takes on NYPD, calls for end to harrassment, brutality, and surveillance. Following days of renewed activity after large 6-month anniversary rallies over the weekend, Occupy Wall Street is taking on the New York City Police Department head on by continuing to stage public protests, building encampments in public squares, and, on Tuesday, marching right to the steps of police headquarters to challenge aggressive police tactics and the culture of impunity perceived by many in the city.

  • US tightens up on protesting In 2011, Time Magazine called The Protester the person of the year. But a new law that was recently signed by President Obama very well might mean that won't happen again. Since the start of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, over 6,700 Americans have been arrested for taking part in demonstrations and this new law could raise those numbers significantly. Marina Portnaya gives us the latest on H.R. 347, the Trespass Bill.

  • From Wall Street to Beursplein, Our Resistance Is Global Occupy Amsterdam is again being threatened with eviction. Amsterdam is home to the world´s oldest stock market - and it is #Occupied. Protesters in Amsterdam, along with dozens of cities across the Netherlands and hundreds throughout the world, took their square on a Global Day of Action on October 15, 2011, four weeks after Occupy Wall Street began. Occupy Amsterdam has occupied Beursplein (Exchange Square, directly in front of the Amsterdam stock exchange, now owned by Wall Street-based NYSE Euronext) ever since. Alongside the Acampadas in Spain and Portgual and the popular assemblies in Greece, the Netherlands remains among the most active Occupy movements in the non-English speaking world.

  • Worldwide Banking Resignations Triple: Why Now? On March 6, 2012, I wrote an article entitled “Mass Banking Resignations Signal A Purging Has Begun?” where I included a list of banking directors, CEOs, and board members of both national and international financial institutions standing who have resigned from their post since September 2011. The data was collected and compiled by independent blog American Kabuki and posted online complete with a description of the individual, location, and link to the resignation announcement where it was covered in the mainstream media. At the time my article was posted, the list had already topped 122.

  • Texas state senator's office firebombed Davis, a Democrat, played a high-profile role last week in arguing against plans by Texas state officials to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, saying such a move could deprive 130,000 Texas women of healthcare services including cancer screening and contraception

  • HR 347 'Trespass Bill' Criminalizes Protest H. R. 347 makes protest of any type potentially a federal offense with anywhere from a year to 10 years in federal prison, providing it occurs in the presence of elites brandishing Secret Service protection, or during an officially defined 'National Special Security Event' (NSSE). NSSEs , ( an invention of Bill Clinton) are events which have been deemed worthy of Secret Service protection, which previously received no such treatment. Justified through part of 'Presidential Decision Directive 62 in 1998; Bill Clinton created an additional class of special events explicitly under the authority of the U.S. Secret Service.

  • Supreme Court says states can’t be sued for violating sick-leave law “By the narrowest of margins, the Court ruled that millions of state workers all across this country will have no meaningful recourse if their employers deny them medical leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA),” Debra L. Ness, the president of the group, said. “This effectively puts state workers and their families at risk when workers become pregnant or illness strikes. It is an appalling and dangerous ruling that simply cannot stand.”

  • Occupy's Bank Blockade Victory For the last two months, Occupy UC Davis has been blockading a campus branch of U.S. Bank.]] Now, in a victory for Occupy that potentially gives birth to a new movement tactic, U.S. Bank has capitulated and permanently closed the branch. U.S. Bank has been a visible symbol on campus of the corporatization and monied corruption of education in part because, as The Aggie campus newspaper explains, “in 2010, all students were required to get new ID cards with the U.S. Bank logo on the back.”

  • Out of Community Colleges and Into For-Profits The merits of routing students away from public schools and into for-profits are debatable. The for-profits can be seen as “nimble critters” and/or “agile predators,” to use the language of three Harvard economists who analyzed this sector in a recent paper. On one hand, these schools are very adaptive and are fulfilling unmet demand, particularly among a low-income population that could benefit most from more education. For-profits offer training for just about every possible career and generally serve as many students as they can. On the other hand, the for-profits are relatively unregulated, and many are fly-by-night operations that scam students. They also charge a lot more than community colleges and can afford to do so because the federal government helps pay their tuition.

  • Extra US Oil Drilling Won't Drop Price of Gas The calculations "help make the point that U.S. production and demand have little to do with the price of gasoline in the U.S., and lend support to the notion that there is not a great deal we in the U.S., acting alone, can do to affect the price of gasoline," Peterson wrote in an email. He pointed out that Energy Department figures show that gas prices in the U.S. seem to rise and fall similarly to gas prices in Europe, showing that it has little to do with American drilling. And that's the key. It's a world market, economists say

  • Infiltration of Political Movements Is the Norm in America In an earlier Truthdig article, we described reports of widespread infiltration of the Occupy movement. In this article we will deal with the history of infiltration of political movements in the United States and the goals of infiltration.

  • Insight: The Wall Street gold rush in foreclosed homes Dan Magder recently gave up a top job with private equity firm Lone Star Funds to strike out on his own and become a landlord. He's joining a growing list of big and small investors who see fat profits to be made in renting out foreclosed homes, especially now the U.S. government is moving ahead with a trial project to sell big pools of single-family homes that Fannie Mae currently owns in some of the hardest-hit housing markets.

  • President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security. The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order's functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determinations.

2012 Mar 23

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • STOCK Act passes in the Senate The STOCK Act - legislation to bar members of Congress from trading stocks based on nonpublic information they have obtained in the course of their congressional work - passed the Senate Thursday in a 96 to 3 vote. The legislation still needs to pass the House. President Obama, who said in a statement he was "pleased" by the Senate vote, has vowed to quickly sign the bill if it reaches his desk. Members of Congress are already subject to insider trading laws. But it is currently within the law for a lawmaker to buy a company's stock after learning, for example, that an upcoming bill will grant that company a large government contract.

  • California Striking Back Against Citizens United California took another bold step toward undoing the damage wrought by the Citizens United decision on Tuesday as the state Assembly Judiciary Committee passed Joint Resolution 22, which calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision. The measure will now go to the floor of the Assembly for a vote. This places California in a growing list of states determined to put the power of democracy squarely back in the hands of its citizens. Similar resolutions have already appeared in Massachusetts, Vermont and Maryland, Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, New York and others. All in all 16 states have introduced or passed similar resolutions.

  • Councillors listened, acted on Citizens United I want to let you know about the recent success of my effort to get the Cambridge City Council to pass a policy resolution in support of a pending measure in the Massachusetts Legislature that is aimed at addressing the United States Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case. n Monday night, the council voted unanimously to request that the Massachusetts Legislature: “pass (Senate) Bill S. 772, which calls upon the United States Congress to pass and send to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to restore the First Amendment and fair elections to the people.”

  • Occupy D.C. set to 'Control the Corporation' after 80 occupiers arrested Following the arrests of 80 Occupy Wall Street participants at Zuccotti Park and Manhattan Park, a week-long "Control the Corporation" conference at Carnegie Institute of Washington,
 sponsored by National Occupation of Washington, D.C., has been announced by human rights defender Kevin Zeese Thursday. The conference that begins on April 2 will be followed by three days of the NOW DC Social Forum with presentations by noted occupiers from across the country.

2012 Mar 24

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Vermont senators blast the JOBS Act after Senate passes it “The so-called ‘JOBS Act’ is an extremely anti-consumer, anti-investor, and anti-jobs bill,” Sanders said in a statement. “As currently drafted, the bill is opposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman (as well as past SEC chairmen appointed by both political parties); AARP; the AFL-CIO; the Consumer Federation of America; Consumers Union; and the Council of Institutional Investors, among many others. There is good reason for the opposition.”

  • 300,000 Quebec students protest tuition hike Tens of thousands of students protested Thursday against a 75 percent tuition hike at universities in Canada’s mostly French-speaking Quebec province, bringing downtown Montreal to a standstill.

  • Documents show NYPD infiltrated liberal groups Undercover NYPD officers attended meetings of liberal political organizations and kept intelligence files on activists who planned protests around the country, according to interviews and documents that show how police have used counterterrorism tactics to monitor even lawful activities.

  • Why tax reform still hasn't come to America Tax day is a little more than three weeks away. And while you're trying to determine what happens when you subtract line 35 from line 43 on your tax form, you might ask: Why is this so complicated? Isn't it time for some tax reform?

  • Ron Paul tops list of House members whose campaigns paid families $3.1 million Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) emerged this week atop a list of congressional representatives who’ve paid family members fees and salaries from their campaign war chests, congressional offices and political action committees, with one ethics advocacy group highlighting him for paying more of his relatives over the last two election cycles than any other member of the House.

  • The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks It's hard not to think it's a big deal when a branch of the Federal Reserve system calls for the breakup of major American banks. The bank has just released its annual report, and the title of the letter is: Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must End Too Big to Fail—Now.

2012 Mar 25

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • SEC takes Wells Fargo to court to enforce subpoenas U.S. securities regulators accused Wells Fargo & Co on Friday of repeatedly ignoring its subpoenas for documents in connection with a probe into the bank's $60 billion sale of mortgage-backed securities.

  • Michael Moore: 'This is just the beginning of OWS' Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore showed up at Zuccotti Park on Satturday. He led hundreds of people from the Left Forum conference to Zuccotti Park on Saturday where hundreds of protesters had gathered to mark six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement

  • sign our "Thank You" card to Starbucks for standing up for gay rights. Starbucks stuck its neck out to publicly support the right of all people to marry, regardless of the gender of their partner. Now it is under attack by the ironically-named, ultra-conservative American “National Organization for Marriage”. Already over 4,000 NOM members have pledged to boycott Starbucks.

  • Chicago officials deny permit for May 20 NATO protest march After approving a parade permit for a group protesting the G-8 and NATO summits in Chicago, the city has denied an identical application by the same group seeking to move their parade one day later in the wake of the White House’s decision to move the G-8 conference.

2012 Mar 26

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy Walk occupies Channel A small group of Spring Breakers gathered around Jason Brock as he streamed live video via a cell phone Saturday morning at The Bridgewater Channel. A few tents were pitched on the narrow beach behind him, and short, handmade signs stuck in the sand.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • HOW THE NYPD HANDLES FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!!!!! Fast foward to 2:55 and watch for the cop that's switching his walkie talkie battery on the left then look for the kid with the yellow occupy flag then watch the NYPD at It's finest... And please note that since I was the one recording the video when I say it was a COMPLETELY UNPROVOKED ATTACK

2012 Mar 27

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Underemployment Holding Back San Diego Economy Ironworkers local 229 has about 1,200 members. Nearly 100 are actively seeking work, but that can change. The recent financial collapse has put a lot of pressure on these workers. Business manager Jose Naranjo says that can easily swell to several hundred. He says the recent financial collapse was not kind. People put too much focus on the jobless rate, said Cox, who thinks adding the unemployed and underemployed paints a more accurate picture.

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  • Wells Fargo Won't Turn Over Documents To Feds: Report Federal securities regulators are asking a federal court to order Wells Fargo & Co. to turn over documents in an investigation of the bank's sale of $60 billion in mortgage-backed securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement Friday that Wells Fargo agreed to produce the documents under subpoenas dating to September of 2011, but the bank has failed to hand over much of the requested material.

  • Lobbyists, Guns and Money Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence. Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

  • The Fukushima Lie Documentary - asks how it could come to this catastrophe, and how the Japanese nuclear bosses and government dealt with the crisis. Our research shows even before the catastrophe a network of energy criminals existed who kept serious mistakes and flaws secret to save costs. For decades many Japanese workers and top government officials are forced into silence

  • 5 Ways Wall Street Is Putting the Squeeze on American Students The damage Wall Street inflicted on our educational infrastructure is growing. As state funding has dwindled, public colleges have raised tuition and are now resorting to even more desperate measures — cutting training for jobs the economy needs most.

  • Finally, OWS gets police to arrest the people in suits Sometimes justice requires a little imagination. On Saturday, when much of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York was loudly denouncing police violence against minorities and protesters, a small group of environmentalists dreamed up a way to get the police to focus on the crimes of the 1 percent, to the point of arresting five corporate suits on United Nations property.
    Granted, those five were actually members of the OWS affinity group Disrupt Dirty Power, which used Saturday’s action (billed as a “mock’upation”) to launch a month of actions targeting the “corrupt partnership between Wall Street, politicians and the business of pollution.” Police officers seemed thrown for a loop as they tore down tents bearing corporate logos and cuffed people who claimed to be from Bank of America and Exxon Mobil. Compared to the rowdy anti-NYPD march earlier that afternoon, this time, the cops had more of a chance to think about what side they’re really on.

  • Court orders FDA to restrict use of antibiotics in livestock The ruling favors a coalition of plaintiffs including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed suit last May in a bid to push the FDA to exert more control over agricultural use of penicillin and tetracycline, two popular antibiotics used in feed to protect chickens, pigs and cattle from disease and speed their growth.

  • When Other Voices Are Drowned Out The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling in Citizens United in 2010 was shaped by an extreme view of the First Amendment: money equals speech, and independent spending by wealthy organizations and individuals poses no problem to the political system

2012 Mar 28

Media: Occupy San Diego

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To help facilitate the construction plans, Romney has paid San Diego attorney Matthew A. Peterson $21,500 since 2008 to lobby city officials for the renovation after dropping out of the 2008 GOP presidential primary.

  • Tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: Fight to keep interest rates down on student loans Sign the petition. Letting interest rates on STUDENT LOANS double while banks can borrow money from the Federal Reserve for virtually nothing. Millions of American students from working class families are able to obtain a college education thanks to low-interest federal student loans. But now Congress is putting those loans in serious jeopardy at a time when students and their families can least afford to pay higher interest rates.

  • Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”

  • Honeymoon’s Over: How We Successfully Dealt With A Disruptive Occupier (Excellent video) Rebecca Solnit refers to the initial rush of collective excitement felt by activists worldwide as Occupy’s ‘honeymoon’ phase. She was comparing the early days of the movement to the golden glow of the energy we feel when we first fall deeply in love with another, but few of us had ever experienced such passionate love for all of humanity. With encampments springing up everywhere, I think most of us not only felt this way, but experienced it simultaneously as a transnational ‘honeymoon.’

  • Mad, Passionate Love -- and Violence When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them.

  • Recording of Boston police nets man $170,000 settlement The City of Boston settled a lawsuit recently filed by Simon Glik, an attorney who was arrested in 2007 as he recorded police using force to subdue another man. The settlement total came to $170,000, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, which represented Glik in the case. He was initially charged with a felony, under laws meant to ban illegal wiretapping, but the charge was dismissed.

2012 Mar 29

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Japan in Uproar Over Censorship of Emperor's Anti-Nuclear SpeechThere is a particularly sensitive accusation reverberating through online discussion boards and social media in Japan: that Emperor Akihito's speech on the one year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami was censored on TV for his comments about the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

2012 Mar 30

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • SM Council Backs Caps on Corporate 'Speech' In response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, the Santa Monica City Council seeks legislative action to reverse corporations' right to unlimited campaign spending. But it's not against all of their constitutional rights.

  • Irvine City Councilman calls for San Onofre to be decommissioned ASAP Tuesday night- March 27th – supporters of decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station packed into the 250+ seat City of Irvine Council Chambers in Orange County. At least 50 people wore green clothing to mark their support for San Clemente Green, an environmental action group working since the Fukushima meltdown last March towards a San Onofre shut down.

  • Chalk the Police - Richmond, VA Earlier this week, a mother was issued a $325 ticket, and a ban from all public parks, for her daughter using some chalk on rocks at Belle Isle in Richmond, VA. In response, activists organized a "Chalkupy the Police" protest at the Richmond Police Department

2012 Mar 31

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • FDA Deletes 1 Million Signatures for GMO Labeling Campaign the FDA virtually erased 1 million signatures and comments on the ‘Just Label It’ campaign calling for the labeling of genetically modified foods. Evidently, the FDA counts the amount of signatures not by how many people signed, but how many different individual letters are brought to it. To the FDA, even tens of thousands of signatures presented on a single petition are counted as – you guessed it – a single comment.

  • Monsanto’s Roundup is Causing DNA Damage New research has recently been released showing that glyphosate, the main active ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup Ultra Max, is causing both DNA and cellular damage to cells found in the mouth and throat.

  • Iran presses ahead with dollar attack Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vision of economic war with the west.

  • SALDAÑA REISSUES CHALLENGE TO CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES TO MAKE TAXES PUBLIC Since issuing her original challenge on February 22nd, Saldaña is the only one of ten candidates who has made her taxes public. The leading Republican contender, Brian Bilbray, has agreed to release his returns, but has not done so. Scott Peters, who is running as a Democrat, has categorically refused to make his tax returns public.

  • Occupy Groups Reimagine The Bank Groups within the Occupy Wall Street movement are trying to overhaul the banking system and even dream of creating a new kind of bank.

  • Occupy Flash Mobs Stock Exchange For months, New Yorkers have been treated to the odd spectacle of the nonviolent protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement being barred from public areas around the New York Stock Exchange as foreign tourists strolled through them at their leisure. That all changed Friday, when more than 300 protesters made their way into the area in small groups and gathered at the foot of the statue of George Washington before bursting into song, dance and protest.

Occupy San Diego Media 2012 Apr

Occupy San Diego Media 2012 Apr

2012 Apr 01

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  • Push to End Too-Big-To-Fail Goes Mainstream the paper, Harvey Rosenblum, the head of the Dallas Fed's research department, bluntly calls for the breakup of Too-Big-To-Fail banks like Bank of America, Chase, and Citigroup. The government's bottomless sponsorship of these TBTF institutions, Rosenblum writes, has created a "residue of distrust for government, the banking system, the Fed and capitalism itself." Once people on both sides of the aisle start realizing they agree about breaking up these banks, who knows? It might even happen.

  • Banking - the Greatest Scam on Earth The Greatest Scam on Earth - The Money Scam! The Money Scam is hidden right out in the open, yet buried in complication and confusion. A retired banker describes simply, the world's Money Scam and the reason every country is now going bankrupt. Private bankers have stolen the money creation process, and whereas once our money was created by the governments, debt-free, it is now created out of thin air and issued as debt with interest charges. In today's banker controlled world, money = debt, debt = slavery and therefore money = slavery --- our monetary systems have become systems of enslavement. Money is created out of nothing, issued as debt, not enough money is created for the future interest payments and inflation steals our savings.

  • The Koch Brothers And The Theft of The American Dream We are in the battle of our lives. And we are in danger of losing. The enemy is men in Brooks Brothers suits. The 2000 election was the first battle and they won. The Supreme Court of the United States installed a president in the White House. And we let them do it. Al Gore let them do it.

2012 Apr 02

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Apr 03

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Balboa Park to get wireless internet access The Balboa Park Online Collaborative has reached an important milestone in creating a wireless digital infrastructure for Balboa Park. More than a dozen of the park’s institutions now have wireless access points, ranging from the San Diego Air & Space Museum to the San Diego Natural History Museum, according to BPOC. The wireless coverage extends outside to many of the park’s walkways and promenades.
    For visitors, that means you can sit on one of the benches on El Prado and check your email or access the Internet on your smartphone or laptop (given the ever-rising cost of individual data plans and the rising demand for bandwidth. such free, public access points are becoming increasingly essential).

  • NRC Forbids San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant From Reopening - March 2012 San Diego, CA - "The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing serious concerns about equipment failures at the San Onofre nuclear plant, on Tuesday prohibited plant operator Southern California Edison from restarting the plant until the problems are thoroughly understood and fixed."

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

  • Some of Christie's biggest bills match model legislation from D.C. group called ALEC It’s called the American Legislative Exchange Council, a little-known conservative group headquartered in Washington, D.C., and funded by some of the biggest corporations in the United States — most with a business interest in state legislation. ALEC has quietly made its mark on the political landscape by providing state governments with mock-up bills that academic and political experts say are, for the most part, tailored to fit a conservative agenda. In recent years, states — particularly those with new Republican governors and legislatures — have been flooded with ALEC’s model bills. Nearly 1,000 of them are introduced every year, and roughly one-fifth of those become law, according to ALEC’s own count. ALEC’s bills are especially attractive because they are written so they can virtually be copied and pasted onto legislative proposals across the land. For lawmakers, it can be an irresistible service.

  • Japan Nuclear Plant May Be Worse Off Than Thought damage to one of three stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could be worse than previously thought, a recent internal investigation has shown, raising new concerns over the plant’s stability and complicating the post-disaster cleanup.

  • Less Visible Occupy Movement Looks for Staying Power Six months after the Occupy movement first used protests and encampments to turn the nation’s attention to economic inequality, the movement needs to find new ways to gain attention or it will most likely fade to the edges of the political discourse, according to supporters and critics.

  • Brooklyn Bridge Re-Occupied Sunday More than 200 Occupy Wall Street supporters returned to the scene of the proverbial crime Sunday on the Brooklyn Bridge, where 700 Americans were arrested when New York City's billionaire mayor unleashed his "private army" on the nonviolent movement during a similar march Oct. 1. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has filed a a filed federal class action lawsuit against Bloomberg, New York City, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and many police officers on behalf of the 700 Occupy protesters arrested Oct. 1.

  • San Onofre Power Plant Misled Federal Regulators: Report The troubled San Onofre nuclear plant in Southern California will remain shut down while investigators try to solve a mystery inside its massive generators – the rapid decay of tubing that carries radioactive water, federal regulators said Tuesday.

  • Supreme Court Ruling Allows Strip-Searches for Any Arrest The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.

2012 Apr 04

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Occupy San Diego Offering $12 Per Hour To Join Their Protests… Are you sick and tired of the rich and corporations controlling decisions about our communities? Do you think its time for banks to pay their fair share? Are you ready to stand up and be a part of the 99% movement? Then join the ACCE Canvas team! •Location: Chula Vista •Compensation: $12/hour + gas mileage •This is a part-time job. •This is at a non-profit organization.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Civil Resistance: A First Look (English) Civil resistance is a way for ordinary people to fight for their rights, freedom and justice without using violence. People engaged in civil resistance use diverse tactics, such as strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations and other actions, to cause wide-ranging social, political and economic change. Around the world, civil resistance has been called by different names—nonviolent struggle, direct action, people power, political defiance, and civic mobilization—but regardless of which term is used, the fundamental dynamics of civil resistance remain essentially the same.

  • West Virginia retirees occupy — and win The group fought to have their healthcare benefits reinstated after the company unilaterally dropped coverage for more than 500 retirees and their families. After more than a year of organizing, protests and, ultimately, a physical occupation, the Occupy Century group reached a settlement with the company late last month that will restore those health benefits and grant $44 million to the retirees over 10 years, with up to $25 million in additional contributions to follow.

  • ACLU blasts Baltimore police for handcuffing schoolchildren The ACLU of Maryland on Friday said it was “appalling” that Baltimore police officers arrested and handcuffed three 9-year-old girls and an 8-year-old boy at an elementary school. The officers arrested the children Thursday afternoon inside Morrell Park Elementary School on aggravated-assault charges. The charges were based on a schoolyard fight that occurred nine days earlier.

2012 Apr 05

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Media: Occupy National and Global

  • TWU Leader Won’t Disown Occupy for Fare-Beating John Samuelsen, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said March 29 he was “not in any way critical” of the illegal actions of Occupy Wall Street members and dissidents in his own union who, without his knowledge, chained open gates at numerous subway stations a day earlier during the morning rush hour, giving straphangers a free ride.

  • Organic Food Industry Bought Up by Corporations Like Coca-Cola You may be wondering why some supposedly ‘healthy’ and ‘environmentally conscious’ companies deceive unknowing consumers into purchasing products with hidden additives and fillers. Perhaps one of the main reasons is that a large number of these pseudo-organic brands are owned by their very unhealthy ‘competitors’, such as Coca-Cola and General Mills. In fact, some of your favorite “All Natural” and organic companies may be owned by a corporate giant. Companies like Honest Tea and Odwalla may appeal to health conscious shoppers, but they are actually owned by Coca-Cola — the very same company that is currently fuming over the requirement to change their recipes in order to avoid a cancer warning label.

  • Police Pepper Spray SaMo College Students During Protest About 30 Santa Monica College students were pepper sprayed by campus police Tuesday evening as they protested a plan to increase tuition. An officer was knocked off balance by the crowd outside a board of trustees meeting and then sprayed the students, Michael Burnett, a chemistry student, told KTLA. The students responded by shouting, "Shame on you!" as pepper spray filled the hallways, said Burnett, 21, who was present for the protest.

2012 Apr 06

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Commercial to air on CNN exposes cover-up and radiation leak at California nuke plant (VIDEO) “Friends of the Earth launched a new television ad campaign today targeting the utility Southern California Edison, the operator of the troubled San Onofre nuclear reactors, which are currently closed due to serious safety problems. The ad parallels the threat from San Onofre’s troubled reactors with the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan — and notes that eight million Americans live within 50 miles of San Onofre, the distance the U.S. government advised should be evacuated in the Japan disaster. The ad urges residents to let the utility know that their families come first and that it must keep the reactors closed.” -Friends of the Earth, April 2

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Fascism Comes to the Internet: Introducing CISPA After nearly unprecedented pushback against bills SOPA and PIPA, their apparent defeat cannot yet be claimed. Most skeptics presumed that the defeat of the aforementioned would only serve to offer a compromised "SOPA light" at some point to circumvent criticism over government censorship. Well, it didn't take long. In addition to OPEN and ACTA to combat supposed piracy issues in the U.S. and Europe respectively, we now have been presented with a full-on fascist template for Internet control where government and private corporations will work hand in hand under the very broad definition of cybersecurity.
    The CISPA acronym is probably the most honest of those proposed thus far, and certainly is self-explanatory: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. Cybersecurity initiatives themselves are framed in such a way as to declare the free and open Internet to be subsumed into national security infrastructure, thus giving it over to the Pentagon, NSA, and other agents for use in surveillance and even offensive war. However, CISPA goes one step further to suggest that all information transmitted on this national security infrastructure is fair game for the prying eyes of the State. Most likely the private sector must bow to any and all demands made, or face being labeled as supporters of terrorism.

  • Hedges: "No Outcry Within Media" on NDAA We had reported on the show that a group of political activists and journalists testified in a New York Court about why they're suing the Obama administration over the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA. Chris Hedges, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter is also one of the plaintiffs; he joins the show to discuss.

  • Obama signs insider trading ban into law In what has become a rare scene in Washington, a group of bipartisan lawmakers joined President Barack Obama today at the White House for his signing of the Stop on Congressional Knowledge Act. The legislation, referred to as the STOCK Act is designed to prohibit members of Congress, their families and staff from using any information gleaned while working on the Hill to execute stock transactions.

  • Is it time to break up the banks? week the Dallas Fed issued an explosive report (PDF) -- predicting America will face another financial crisis and be forced to bail out Wall Street again unless the biggest banks are broken up. This isn't the Occupy movement. The Dallas Fed is one of the most conservative banks in the Federal Reserve system. And it knows first-hand about the dangers of under-regulated banks -- the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and '90s affected Texas like nowhere else. According to The Dallas Fed report, Wall Street's power makes it almost impossible to control because "they have the lawyers and the money to resist the pressures of federal regulation." This means the Dodd-Frank act, which is supposed to prevent another financial calamity, is woefully inadequate.

  • Capitalism's Dirty Secret: Corporations Don't Create Jobs, They Destroy Them Corporations are not working for the 99 percent. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special five-part series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, and a leading expert on the business corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and Alter Net’s Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history and purpose of the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take control of the business corporation and make it work for the real economy?

  • Meet the Occupy candidates Activists are running for seats in the same statehouses they occupied. Will the movement get behind them? Hakim, clearly, has a different view. “This is just another medium [for change],” he says, though he’s quick to note, “I’m not running as an Occupy candidate. I want to make that very clear.” In standard political speak, he explains that he wants to represent all his potential constituents.

  • Small CA Group Wins Over Walmart Quartz Hill Cares, a small group of concerned citizens in the Antelope Valley, CA, claimed a legal victory this week to stop retail giant Walmart. In 2007, the company proposed to build a 100,000 square foot store in Quartz Hill, a small town 70 miles north of Los Angeles. Community members came together in an effort to prevent Walmart from entering their community and potentially selling alcohol in close proximity to the local high school. Despite strong local opposition, many local politicians immediately supported the proposal to build the store.
    KTLA Channel 5 featured Loretta Berry of Quartz Hill Cares as saying, “The mayor said from the very beginning that this will be built. He said he didn’t care about the citizens of Quartz Hill or the businesses.” The group filed a case with the California 2nd District Court of Appeals. Finally, six years after the struggle began, the court ruled in favor of Quartz Hill Cares this week. The court ruled that the city had failed to meet the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act when they completed the Environmental Impact Report. For now, the group has temporarily blocked Walmart’s plans to enter the area. Berry as quoted in the L.A. Times:

2012 Apr 07

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Boehner attends Bilbray's fundraiser in PB But outside, a small group of protesters were seen chanting and holding signs for women's rights. Protester Dave Patterson says his biggest issue is what he calls, the GOP's war on women. "They need to get rid of Bilbray," said Patterson, protester. "They don't want women to have access to birth control and when they get pregnant they don't want them to have access to abortions. I guess for Republicans they want them to be down, home, barefoot and pregnant."

  • Occupy San Diego, Six Months Later David Abramson, a member of Occupy San Diego, and Jonathan Graubart, associate professor of political science at San Diego State University, talk to KPBS about the Occupy movement.

  • Occupy San Diego Marks Six Month Anniversary Six months after the Occupy San Diego movement started, there are no longer protestors occupying San Diego's Civic Center. Abramson said over the past six months, Occupy has had several achievements: National Bank Transfer Day, working with unions in an effort to shut down the port and contributing to efforts to stop the SOPA and PIPA bills.

  • NRC chief heads to sickly San Onofre nuclear plant The twin reactors at the San Onofre nuclear plant have been sidelined, more than 300 tubes that carry radioactive water will be scrapped because of excessive wear, and investigators are trying to figure out why tubing is rattling inside the lungs of the plant — its massive steam generators. Protesters present. Video.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Long Demise of Glass-Steagall A chronology tracing the life of the Glass-Steagall Act, from its passage in 1933 to its death throes in the 1990s, and how Citigroup's Sandy Weill dealt the coup de grâce.

  • MPAA boss: we're cooking up a new SOPA behind the scenes Former Senator Chris Dodd, head of the MPAA, has hinted to the Hollywood Reporter that he's already greasing the wheels for a new version of SOPA, though he's shy about revealing details because of the public outcry that might ensue.

  • The Evolution of the Butterfly (Occupy) Renowned cellular biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton narrates the process of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly over a milieu of imagery in "The Evolution of the Butterfly". The film combines first hand footage from the Occupy Wall Street movement with stylized portraits of the recent economic collapse and gives a backdrop of hope to sometimes bleak reality.

2012 Apr 08

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • San Onofre barred from restarting until problems are solved The head of the federal agency overseeing the nation's nuclear power toured the troubled San Onofre plant Friday and promised that the facility's reactors would not restart until officials find the root cause of the mysterious equipment problems that have closed them for the last two months. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko toured the darkened plant along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D- Calif.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and talked to Southern California Edison officials about the unusually fast degradation of steam generator tubes that carry radioactive water in the plant's two working reactor units.

  • SAN ONOFRE: Environmental groups hold protests at nuke plant Friends of the Earth are demanding a full accounting of what went wrong at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The FOE has been running a television ad that contends Southern California Edison is rushing the plant back into service after several problems with tubing forced the generator to shut down, a charge the utility denies. The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, plans to visit the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Friday and is scheduled to take questions from the media at 3 p.m.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Wall Street Escalates The Battle For Union Square The branch of Occupy Wall Street protesters who have colonized Union Square for the past three weeks continue their nightly standoff with the New York Police Department, which each night deploys more than fifty officers to clear the park and stand guard along a wall of metal barricades to make sure no one gets in.
    David Graeber, an author who has been closely involved with the movement, read aloud from an enlarged copy of a 2000 federal court ruling that held sleeping on the sidewalk as a form of political protest was legal, as long as protesters don't take up more than half the sidewalk or otherwise act disorderly.
    The protesters walked across the street to the Bank of America, and started rolling out their sleeping bags. Police officers initially assured the campers "It's all good." Guest reported that around 3:30, two police officers roused protesters sleeping in front of a Citi Bank location and forced them to stand. When protesters again read the officers the law, took their badge numbers, and threatened to report them to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the officers left without making any arrests.
    Not everyone in the movement is convinced that this standing conflict with the police is the best course of action. Some even criticize the Occupiers' focus on Union Square altogether. "I consider the entire scene at Union Square to be the opposite of what Occupy Wall Street represents," Sheynin said. "The day you arrived here, you displaced a community that had been here for 20 years. You came in in a way that affected other people, you didn't get their consent, and you didn't even try to talk to them."
    In a statement released prior to the raid of the building, Occupy SF said: In a city with ten thousand homeless people and thirty-two thousand vacant but habitable units, it is a crime against humanity that people are prevented from sleeping through the night as part of a political protest or as a basic human right. The city wants Occupy SF and the homeless off the street – harassing, intimidating, and arresting us every night–so now we are inside creating a vibrant space for health, humanity, and free expression. This building has been empty for five years and was previously a mental health clinic providing a valuable service to the community. Five years ago the Board of Supervisors cut the funding to this vital community center causing many people with mental illness to be put out on the street and become subject to arrest and harassment simply for now existing in these very same streets they were forced into. This funding cut was brought on by the international financial crisis caused by a corrupt banking system which profits off the backs of the 99%.

2012 Apr 09

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Media: Occupy National and Global

  • US Bank closes UC Davis branch, cites "intolerable" Occupy protests Citing the "intolerable" situation created by the daily protests outside the bank's doors, US Bank officials abruptly closed the US Davis branch location at the end of February, ending an agreement with the school that generated upward of $170,000 annually for student activities.

  • Fault Lines – Occupy Wall Street: Surviving the Winter Even if the camps were cleared, it’s clear that Occupy considered as a movement changed the discourse to include “income inequality” (class), has not (perhaps not yet) been co-opted, has not (perhaps not yet) been successfully demonized by our famously free press, and has also built up social capital, and not in bowling leagues or rotisserie baseball, either. These are tremendous achievements

  • How Dangerous is the Radioactive Wave Headed Toward the US? A radioactive wave is headed toward the West Coast of the United States courtesy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster? So with nuclear power still wreaking havoc on the environment - why are the Japanese about to flip on more of their nuclear reactors?

  • The Mainstream Media Ignores Illegal Arrests of Tucson Occupiers On Friday, March 23, Paul Gattone, the lawyer representing many of the Occupy Tucson arrestees, held a press conference to protest the Tucson Police Department’s recent actions against the occupiers at Vente de Agosto park downtown. Despite the fact that five occupiers had been arrested two nights before the press conference, and two the night before, no mainstream media turned up.

  • Occupy is No Longer About Occupying Public Space, It is About Occupy Action each addressing core issues directly related to why so many thousands of people began Occupying Wall Street to begin with. There’s Fight BAC, a project with the (not at all modest) goal of taking down Bank of America. There’s the effort to fight foreclosures and evictions through occupations, auction blockades or eviction defense.

  • Occupy Chicago kicks off 'Chicago Spring' with rallies Occupy Chicago called Saturday a citywide day of action. Groups all across the city rallied in 13 neighborhoods. Some events were in Chicago's suburbs, as well. Those gathered talked about a number issues, like foreclosures, residents' visions for their communities and genocide.

2012 Apr 10

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • US Union Pensions Hole Deepens to $369 Billion The hole in the pension plans of U.S. labor unions now stands at $369 billion, Credit Suisse has calculated with the aid of new reporting standards. This raises the prospect of higher pension contributions for employers and deteriorating industrial relations.

  • Can Occupy Walk Through the Doors It Opened? Or Will It Paint Itself into a Corner? Seizing on the popularity of Occupy Wall Street, a broad coalition of liberal-left groups and organizations created the 99 Percent Spring, a movement aiming to recruit and train 100,000 Americans to learn the ways of non-violent direct action. However, Occupy Wall Street protesters have expressed mixed feelings about the 99 Percent Spring

  • Broad Coalition of Journalists and Activists Join in Legal Challenge to NDAA Journalists are pressing forward in their pursuit of the rescue of the Bill of Rights from a federal government determined to hold not only the Constitution hostage, but perhaps indefinitely detain those brave enough to defend it. Seven dedicated plaintiffs have filed a complaint in federal court challenging key provisions National Defense Authorization Act. Specifically, the suit avers that the vagueness of several key terms in that law are creating a dangerous environment for reporters and activists to such a degree that the right of free speech is being infringed.

  • Supreme Court To Re-Examine Its Citizens United Ruling The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on a case that speaks directly to the previous ruling of Citizens United. Some time ago, the Montana Supreme Court essentially overruled Citizens United based on the idea that a federal law does not override a state law. Montana has very strict guidelines in place to prevent the very corruption that Citizens United invites because they have dealt with precisely this problem in the past. So as Justice Alito was making a fool of himself by insisting there would be no corruption, Montana has a number of laws on its books that says otherwise. You would think that a Supreme Court Justice might have availed himself of that precedent before ruling that it doesn’t exist.

  • Occupy groups focusing protest on foreclosures local Occupy groups pursue an issue they believe has emotional resonance among America's struggling lower and middle classes. Fighting foreclosures and evictions, activists say, gives the disparate movement a unifying focus and embodies its anti-Wall Street message. It also has offered a way for Occupy -- up till now a largely white, middle-class movement -- to broaden its reach to minorities.

  • You Can't Leave Occupy Wall Street My last post was called " Why I came to Occupy Wall Street and Why I Left," and I caught a lot of grief from my readers for not giving them what the title promised: I explained why I came to OWS -- that's the easy part -- but I didn't really say why I left. It's going to take a whole series of posts to properly explain why I stopped working on the movement, but I think it'll help ease the suspense if I write a few words about what it even means to "leave" Occupy Wall Street. That verb, I'll be the first to admit, was an inappropriate one.

2012 Apr 11

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Radiation from Japan found in kelp off U.S. West Coast Radioactive iodine was found in kelp off the U.S. West Coast following last year’s earthquake-triggered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, according to a new study. It was already known that radioactive iodine 131 (131-I), carried in the atmosphere, made it across the Pacific within days of the March 11, 2011 tsunami disaster, albeit in minuscule amounts. But marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) discovered the radioactive isotope in ocean kelp, which is “one of the strongest plant accumulators of iodine,” within a month of the accident.

2012 Apr 12

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • An Open Letter To Wal-Mart Upon hearing of Wal-Mart’s plan to open a store in Logan Heights’ and Sherman Heights’ iconic Farmer’s Market building on Imperial Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets, we as community; residents, non-profit organizations, faith, and labor leaders began the process of soliciting the community's input on the proposed store. As part of that process, we have compiled a list of priorities for prospective business partners.

  • Unions Send Wal-Mart Letter Outlining Requests A handful of community and labor groups have penned an open letter to Walmart concerning the company’s announced intention to take over the farmers' market building on Imperial Avenue in Sherman Heights. The letter states that the groups met with Walmart representatives and consultants on March 29 to discuss the community’s expectations for the store and to request “a legally binding community benefits agreement.” The list of priorities, which letter-signers say were gathered through soliciting direct input from the community, include local hiring, affordable health benefits for employees, traffic mitigation projects, safety improvements, and investment in community programs.

  • An Open Letter To Wal-Mart The community’s list of priorities includes local hire, affordable health benefits, traffic mitigation, safety improvements, and investment in community programs. All of the issues included are considered vital commitments to meeting the needs of local residents and important for any large retailer interested in being a partner in the success of our community. We believe that the only way to truly commit to those priorities is with a legally binding agreement with the community.

  • Community's 'open letter' to Walmart Group wants retail giant to commit to local hires, affordable benefits. As Walmart prepares to bring its smaller grocery-format store concept to San Diego, a coalition of unions, neighborhood groups and nonprofits is asking the company to commit to hiring local workers and investing in the community.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Their plan for low-wage America JOBS ARE coming back, but you can forget about a living wage--unless you and your co-workers are organized enough to demand one. That's the real story behind the long-delayed rebound in employment that government statistics have been showing for the past several months.

  • Occupy takes protest to street -- the one near Bank of America Over the weekend, Occupy D.C. activists established what they hoped would be a permanent camp outside a Bank of America branch near the White House. There was but one tent -- and it was purely symbolic, with protesters sleeping on the street instead. Activists say they're returning to Occupy’s roots.

  • New jobs added but not enough to satisfy GOP Bernie joins Ed Schultz on MSNBC to talk about Republican obstructionism on the economy. “If you’re asking me, are the Republicans prepared to do whatever they can to torpedo the economy in order to defeat Obama, I think the answer is pretty clear. They have shown that time and time again.”

  • Why Obama's JOBS Act Couldn't Suck Worse The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market. In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

  • Occupy escapes eviction Less than 30 minutes after police began bulldozing the Occupy New Haven encampment on the New Haven Green, city officials were forced to halt the eviction when a federal appeals court issued an injunction allowing the protest to survive at least another week.

  • Occupy Returns to Roots With 'Sleepful Protests' The newest strategy is called "sleepful protest" (#sleepfulprotest, for Twitter users). Over the weekend, Occupy D.C. activists established what they hoped would be a permanent, though purely symbolic, camp outside a Bank of America branch near the White House.

  • Madison City Council passes resolution recognizing Occupy Madison Resolution passed at the City Council meeting on April 10: NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City of Madison thanks the Occupy Madison movement and the current Occupy Madison residents for their efforts to address important community needs during this recession and recognizes their potential to be an important resource for this city;

  • Monsanto and Big Tobacco Blamed for Birth Defects Monsanto, Philip Morris and other U.S. tobacco giants knowingly poisoned Argentinean tobacco farmers with pesticides, causing “devastating birth defects” in their children, dozens of workers claim in court.

  • Study: Autism Linked to Industrial Food, Environment new study by Clinical Epigenetics, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses largely on diseases, has found that the rise in autism in the United States could be linked to the industrial food system, specifically the prevalence of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the American diet.

  • Monsanto sued for poisoning farmers Members of the "Occupy" movement in the Midwest protest against Monsanto's agricultural practices in front of the Missouri Botanical Garden during the "Occupy the Midwest" regional conference in St. Louis, Missouri March 16, 2012 A lawsuit filed this week claims that the Monsanto corporation, "motivated by a desire for unwarranted economic gain,” knowingly poisoned farmers that were pressured to use the company’s chemicals.

  • Montreal Students Occupy Banks in 12-Hour Protest Marathon Students in Montreal and across Quebec today continue their protest against tuition increases and austerity measures in education with a 12-hour ¨“marathon of intensive vindication,” according to organizers. Today will see rolling student protests mostly focused against banks. In Montreal, marches leave from Victoria Square every hour and will each take unique routes through downtown. Just after 8am ET this morning, Montreal police dispersed a blockade ot the Banque Nationale tower using chemical weapons, preventing hundreds from getting to work inside. Meanwhile, in Quebec City, 60 protesters occupied a CIBC bank near the National Assembly. When police entered to remove them, the group merely crossed the street and occupied a Banque Nationale branch.

2012 Apr 13

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • UC Davis Pepper Spray Report Released: Campus Police Force 'Very Dysfunctional' Months after students at UC Davis were filmed being soaked in pepper spray and arrested by police in riot gear after peacefully protesting at their university, a UC Davis 'task force' has finally released a report on the incident today. The report includes a number of criticisms against police and administrative action on the day stating, "The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented." The report is critical of the actions of Police Chief Annette Spicuzza. It states, “the command and leadership structure of the UCDPD is very dysfunctional.” The 190-page Reynoso Task Force Report said the use of pepper spray was “not supported by objective evidence and not authorized by policy.” •The pepper spray used (MK-9) was not an authorized weapon for UC Davis police officers and officers were not trained in how to use it.

2012 Apr 14

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Evicted From Park, Occupy Protesters Take to Sidewalks The protesters arrived on Wall Street on Wednesday night carrying bedrolls, quilts and blankets. They spread pieces of cardboard on the sidewalks. Then, as several police officers stood nearby, the protesters made signs with anticorporate slogans.

  • DOJ sues Apple over price-fixing scheme The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday brought a lawsuit against Apple and several publishing companies over a scheme to fix e-book prices. The suit stems from the 2010 release of the iPad, when Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) reached an agreement with five publishers to release books on its then-new iBookstore. The DOJ said Apple colluded to raise the price of e-books with CBS's (CBS, Fortune 500) Simon & Schuster, News Corp.'s (NWS) Harper Collins, Hachette Book Group, Pearson's (PSO) Penguin unit and Macmillan.

  • Mitt's off on PBS Mitt Romney supports removing all federal funding for PBS, and if the network is interested in survival, it will be forced to turn to private advertising revenue. "We're not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird is going to have advertisements," is exactly how he put it, but Romney is neither smart nor funny, so allow me to translate. Advertisements turn children's brains into thin slurry that candy companies and Mc Donalds then build direct pile lines into. That isn't even a hyperbole, as anyone who has heard a child suggest what model of car to buy can attest. It is wrong to advertise to children, and for someone who wants to run the country to so blatantly support it is lunacy. At its best, PBS is a bulwark against the commercial world. Certainly allowing "Sesame Street" to become a toy store dynasty is a mixed bag, but PBS shows themselves are often the purest thing available to young minds. To threaten to take that away to save money is absurd.

  • Keep Super PACs off PBS and NPR U.S. appeals court just struck down a ban on political ads on public broadcasting.1 That means your local PBS or NPR station could start running nasty attack ads right away.

  • Iceland forgives mortgage debt of its population The government of Iceland has forgiven the mortgage debt for much of its population. This nation chose a very different way of stopping the crisis from the rest of European countries. It decided to hear the requests of the population and to put politicians and bankers on the bench of the accused three years after their financial excesses would sank one of the most prosperous economies in 2008.

  • Top Fed Official: “The Moment Is Now” to Break Up Big Banks The nation’s largest banks are “a perversion of capitalism” and “a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy.” The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed in the wake of the crisis “may actually perpetuate an already dangerous trend of increasing banking industry concentration.”

  • ‘Occupy’ as a business model: The emerging open-source civilization The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. Occupy Wall Street set up working groups to find solutions to their physical needs. The economy was considered as a provisioning system (as explained in Marvin Brown’s wonderful book, Civilising the Economy), and it was the “citizens”, organised in these working groups, who decided which provisioning system was appropriate given their ethical values.
    For example, organic farmers from Vermont provided free food to the campers, but this had a negative side effect: the local street vendors, generally poor immigrants, did not fare too well with everyone getting free food. The occupiers cared about the vendors and so they set up an Occupy Wall Street Vendor Project, which raised funds to buy food from the vendors.

  • Is Wal-Mart good for America? During the last two decades, Wal-Mart has been able to take advantage of the rise of information technology and the explosion of the global economy to change the balance of power in the business world.

  • What Is Occupy Wall Street About? If you're having trouble understanding what is at stake in the "Occupy" protests, here are some numbers that help explain the problem.

  • 10 Big Companies That Pay No Taxes (and Their Favorite Politicians) Between 2008 and 2011, 26 major American corporations paid no net federal income taxes despite bringing in billions in profits, according to a new report (PDF) from the nonprofit research group Citizens for Tax Justice. CTJ calculates that if the companies had paid the full 35 percent corporate tax rate, they would have put more than $78 billion into government coffers.

  • How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

  • UC Davis Pepper Spray "Could Have Been Prevented" The 200 page document concluded that the incident "should and could have been prevented." Those words appear in the first paragraph of the lengthy document. The report also said that the use of the pepper spray "does not appear to have been an objectively reasonable use of force."

  • STUNNING! Banksters launder foreign drug cartel money as Wells Fargo invests in for-profit prisons Last year, Wells Fargo paid a fine they could easily afford when they had purchased Wachovia bank, after Wachovia got busted laundering $110 Million dollars of drug money for foreign drug cartels. If you're keeping score at home that means if you get busted smoking a joint you go to jail, but if you get busted laundering millions of dollars in drug cartel money you get a slap on the wrist. Now, here's the catch, if you get caught smoking pot and go to jail, Wells Fargo will make a profit off of that too thanks to America's growing for-profit prison system.

  • Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products industry. Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back.

  • Owned & Operated (Complete) Owned & Operated is a mosaic of the world through the lens of the internet. Showing our lives as consumers, under the thumbs of privileged individuals and their methods of control. But the world is awakening, and the experience is something outside the normal rules of social interaction, causing excitement in those who are not served by the current system... and fear in those who are pampered by it.

2012 Apr 15

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Battle for the Soul of Occupy First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout… then they smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids… and now they’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and co-optation. Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades? Will you allow Move On, The Nation and Ben & Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a “99% Spring” reelection campaign for President Obama?

  • Stop the Nuclear Industry Welfare Program The US is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programmes – the extraordinary amount of corporate welfare going to the nuclear energy industry.

  • 99 Percent Spring Gets Progressives Using Obama Campaign Rhetoric and Advocating for Inadequate Solutions to the Wealth Divide Move On, Rebuild the Dream, SEIU and its allies are so sophisticated at getting people to work for their Democratic Party agenda. Initially Van Jones tried to turn Occupy into a Tea Party for the Dems, promising thousands of 99% candidates -- thankfully, that did not materialize as Occupy refused his invitation to co-option. Now, they are trying a more discreet approach. They know that to herd cats is a challenge -- unless you put out food! The food here is civil disobedience trainings. Once they get the Occupiers and others in the 99% to come to their trainings they direct them to support the "Buffett Rule for Tax Fairness."

  • Wells Fargo’s prison cash cow Despite, or rather because of, its role as one of the leading sub-prime mortgage lenders prior to the 2008 crash in the housing market, the bank was handed $37 billion from the U.S. government, a transfer of wealth from the foreclosed upon have-nots to the haves doing the foreclosing – people like chairman and CEO John Stumpf, whose compensation actually rose after his company’s de facto bankruptcy to a cool $18 million last year.

  • Debate: Occupy Wall Street vs Spring99% Co-optation? There is a debate going on right now within certain progressive activist circles and communities around the country. It’s a debate generally between Occupy Wall Street activists and supporters with those individuals and groups that have coalesced around a loose network called Spring99%. There are accusations from Occupy folks that Spring99% is trying to co-opt the OWS movement. That Move On is a front for the Democratic Party. And there are denials both from activists within the Spring99% network and members of the Occupy movement itself

  • A13 Occupy Answers New York Stock Exchange 3:53 pm April 13, NYC: Occupy Wall Street gathers on the steps of Federal Hall to counter the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange with "the People's Gong." Police make several arrests and attempt to prevent media from documenting them.

  • Yes, The 99% Spring Is A Fraud With hindsight gained by googling “MoveOn” and “co-opt” after the fact, I can’t claim that nobody tried to warn me. Many websites with left and even liberal politics had said in so many words, “Be wary of this organization called the 99% Spring. It is a Trojan horse for the Democrats.” I just didn’t read that anywhere in a timely fashion. I’ve had a lot of stuff on my plate lately. That’s my excuse. And in my ignorance, I responded to some spam about “nonviolent direct action training” organized by Move On and got invited to this 99% Spring thing on April 10 at the Goddard Riverside Community Center in Manhattan. Somebody even called me all the way from San Francisco to make sure I was a sincere seeker on the left and would be attending, along with 120,000 others in training sessions around the country

  • OWS Friday 13, April 2012. For the third consecutive night, Occupy Wall Street protesters used a tactic that many of them hope will emerge as a replacement for their encampment at Zuccotti Park, which was disbanded by the police in November. Norman Siegel, a prominent civil-rights lawyer who visited the protesters on Wednesday night, said a decision by a federal court in Manhattan arising from a lawsuit in 2000 allowed the protesters to sleep on sidewalks as a form of political expression so long as they did not block doorways and took up no more than half the sidewalk.

  • Ask not who’s co-opting you, ask whom you can co-opt Meanwhile, however, there’s a lot of anxiety running around the Occupy movement’s organizer email lists and in articles being published about the trainings in Occupy-friendly outlets, from Couner Punch to Adbusters. The fear is of course that the movement and its “99%” meme are being co-opted. The 99% Spring, though, is a little different. Who’s co-opting whom, here? And what’s at stake? Mubarak didn’t fall just because thousands of people were camped out in Tahrir Square; he fell because those thousands of people inspired Egyptian unions to stop working, to grind the economy to a halt. Rather than arguing about whether the 99% Spring is co-option or not — spoiler alert: it is — Occupiers can be strategizing about how to co-opt it back even more. How can all these newly-trained troops be mobilized into Occupying? What specific actions can they be drawn into to practice what they’ve learned?

  • More problems found at San Onofre nuclear power plant Southern California Edison officials said Wednesday that they are now seeing the same unusual type of wear on steam generator tubes at both of the San Onofre nuclear plant's reactor units. In recent months, officials have found unexpected wear on more than 300 tubes that were installed as part of the $671-million replacement of the plant's four steam generators. The new steam generators were installed within the last two years, which made that rate of wear unexpected.

2012 Apr 16

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy Grand Rapids holds first rally of 2012, sets date to 're-occupy' downtown Though we may not have seen the Occupy Grand Rapids group downtown recently, members say they are still meeting and will be out in full force this summer. On Saturday, the group gathered at Monument Park in the city for their first rally of 2012. An open mic session allowed visitors a chance to speak out. Members say the next few months will be spent planning to ‘re-occupy’ downtown, beginning on July 4.

  • SINGLE MOTHER FALSELY ACCUSED OF ENDANGERING HER CHILDREN AT OCCUPY OAKLAND The authorities apparently stop at nothing to intimidate and scare people from participating in a movement that they fear. Stayaway orders, bogus arrests, heavy charges for minor offenses, sham “lynching” laws, and, most recently, deploying the Child Protective Services to attack a single mother for participating in Occupy Oakland.

  • Can we have hierarchy without oppression? Confucian philosopher Steve Angle recently authored a paper about why some forms of deference and hierarchy do not have to be oppressive, especially if the hierarchy is always changing and evolving. One person aptly defers to another on the basis of a fit between the latter's role, experiences, learning, or skills, and the particular circumstance in which the two find themselves.

  • Occupy Papua New Guinea Takes On Government, Wins In another example of the power of popular resistance, Papua New Guineans this week appear to have successfully stopped the government from delaying elections and implementing a controversial Judicial Conduct Law that would allow the legislature to remove judges. In front of a massive crowd organized by labor unions, churches, social media groups, and civil society organizations, PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill promised to hold elections on time.
    The protests were organized in part by student activists and bloggers affiliated with Occupy Waigani, a group that formed last month to occupy Parliament in protest of the Judicial Conduct Law. Among other efforts, Occupiers in PNG are also working to address the exploitation of local resources by corporate interests and unequal development in the country. #OccupyWallStreet stands in solidarity with Occupiers and dissidents everywhere. (See below for a timeline of events in PNG!)

  • Federal Court Recognizes Chalking Freedom in Orlando Prior to the decision Friday, Orlando officials indicated that they would be appealing an “adverse ruling”. The city would find it difficult to play a purer than thou antichalk attitude in this case. Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer encouraged downtown businesses to chalk their sidewalks in support of the home team Magic when they were in the NBA playoffs in 2009. The city also permits a yearly chalk art festival held by the local Rotary Club. David Baker told Orlando bureaucrats, “The city may not selectively interpret and enforce the ordinance based on its own desire to further the causes of particular favored speakers.”

2012 Apr 17

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • If 25,000 people rally in midtown, is that a story? vThe Occupy movement, active all winter, has been mostly ignored by the press. Now, along with other groups, it is stepping up its rallies and protests against corporate influence and militarism in America. Will there be any press coverage to speak of?

  • 9 Strategies to End Corporate Rule Corporate power is behind the politics of climate denial, Wall Street bailouts, union busting, and media consolidation, to name just a few. And policies advocated by the 1 percent are bankrupting the middle class. But real people have power, too. Here are some of their most successful strategies.

  • Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed State Laws Are All Connected To itself, ALEC is an organization dedicated to the advancement of free market and limited government principles through a unique "public-private partnership" between state legislators and the corporate sector. To its critics, it's a shadowy back-room arrangement where corporations pay good money to get friendly legislators to introduce pre-packaged bills in state houses across the country. Started in the mid-1970s, ALEC's existence has been long known but its practices, largely, have not; the group hasn't been eager to tie its bills in Wisconsin to those in Ohio to those in North Carolina.

  • Why a Fair Economy is Not Incompatible with Growth but Essential to It One of the most pernicious falsehoods you'll hear during the next seven months of political campaigning is there's a necessary tradeoff between fairness and economic growth. By this view, if we raise taxes on the wealthy the economy can't grow as fast. Wrong. Taxes were far higher on top incomes in the three decades after World War II than they've been since. And the distribution of income was far more equal. Yet the American economy grew faster in those years than it's grown since tax rates on the top were slashed in 1981.

  • Revolution In Europe “This spontaneous and popular movement is not swayed by any political organization, but is propelled by and is a response to the national and collective urge from our hearts. We can produce democratic, fair laws to end extreme poverty…” These sentiments can be heard at any given Occupy rally, but they were spoken in Spain. They could have also come from Greece, or Ireland, or Italy, or any of the European countries where social services and fair wages have been strangled by extreme austerity measures. The renaissance of activism that’s swept this country was sparked far from our shores.

  • Occupy the movie OCCUPY THE MOVIE will document the Occupy movement’s first year with gritty detail, while exploring its origins, purpose, and future. It will be like no other film you’ve seen, intercutting the dramatic handheld footage of protestors with candid interviews of the movement’s leaders and enemies.

2012 Apr 18

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Two thirds of the population of Ireland are boycotting household taxes Ten thousand people took part in todays anti austerity march in dublin, Ireland. They represent over 3 million people that are taking part in a boycott of government imposed taxes on homes. More than 1 million homes have not registered for this tax, and that more 60 percent of the total number of homes, which in reality means more than 3 million people are taking part in the boycott, as the official government figures per household is 3 people per home on average.

  • Break Up BofA! This music video was created as part of the Doo-Occupy, Bail Out America project, a collaboration between the Backbone Campaign (http://BackboneCampaign.org) and Ariel Zevon to spread best practices in community organizing for eviction protection, student debt relief and other economic democracy causes of the 99%.

  • Police warn of building takeover ahead of Occupy SF action Police are asking property owners in The City to do whatever it takes to keep members of the Occupy SF movement from squatting. The global Occupy movement against economic disparity has apparently changed tactics in San Francisco, police say, as rumors swirl about a May 1 takeover of an undisclosed property.

  • NYPD Arrest At Least 10 As Occupy Wall Street Seeks Sanctuary On Federal Property Forced off the sidewalk on Broad Street earlier in the day, Occupiers sought refuge on the steps of Federal Hall, which is U.S. government property. For the most part, U.S. Park Police tolerated their presence, provided they didn't violate a "no sleeping or camping" rule. But as day turned to night, the NYPD continued to make arrests, frequently singling out protesters who seemingly did nothing wrong, and in some cases violently detaining them.

2012 Apr 19

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Say NO to Wal MartResidents of Sherman Heights stand against the destruction of the area's historical farmer's market building. Photos

  • Sherman Heights residents shocked by Wal-Mart actions In stark contrast to promises made to members of the Sherman Heights community, demolition of the historical farmer’s market building began in earnest, April 17, 2012. “During several public presentations, as recently as Monday, Wal-Mart was asked if they would destroy the building to which they repeatedly said they wouldn’t,” explained Georgette Gomez of the Coalition for Safe and Healthy Economic Progress.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • San Onofre Still Leads the Nation in Safety Complaints Despite progress in improving the safety culture of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the plant still ranked highest in the nation last year for both substantiated and unsubstantiated safety complaints at nuclear plants, according to figures from federal regulators.

  • Shareholders reject exec pay packages Citigroup has become the first Wall Street bank to get a thumbs-down from shareholders over outsized executive pay. At its annual meeting Tuesday, 55% of the bank's shareholders voted against the pay packages that have been granted to Citigroup's top executives, including CEO Vikram Pandit's nearly $15 million for last year and $10 million retention pay.

  • New Law: Virginia will not cooperate with NDAA detention On Wednesday, the Virginia legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that forbids state agencies from cooperating with any federal attempt to exercise the indefinite detention without due process provisions written into sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act.
    HB1160 “Prevents any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the armed forces of the United States in the conduct of the investigation, prosecution, or detention of a United States citizen in violation of the United States Constitution, Constitution of Virginia, or any Virginia law or regulation.”

2012 Apr 20

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Grand Jury To Look Into SDPD Oversight Board Citizens' Review Board Accused Of Showing Favoritism To San Diego Police Officers. A recent 10News I-Team investigation that examined questionable practices inside a local citizens group has prompted a San Diego grand jury inquiry.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy movement turning to shareholder meetings A group called 99% Power -- a reference to those not among the top 1 percent of earners -- says it plans actions at 36 shareholder meetings, with the first big push coming at Tuesday's Wells Fargo & Co gathering in San Francisco.

  • ALEC Wants You To Pay 750 Percent More For High-Speed Internet A few years ago, the city of Wilson, North Carolina, decided that it would create its own broadband system, which it called Greenlight. The service offered speeds twice as fast as private competitors in the area for a similar price. Soon, the success of the service spread, and a number of other cities began offering municipal broadband systems that were cheaper and/or faster than private competitors’.
    But state legislators — who received $600,000 in contributions from the telecom industry in the previous election cycle — reacted to the spread of these successful services by undercutting them with a bill that made it very difficult for cities to operate their own broadband systems. One provision in the bill made it illegal for cities to offer broadband services that are priced below their costs.

2012 Apr 21

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Walmart execs respond to community's 'open letter'April 14, 2012 Since the announcement, union workers, neighborhood groups, and business leaders signed an "open-letter" lettingWal-Mart executives know their concerns and listed demands that they want considered before construction starts. The list of concerns included making local hires, affordable health benefits, improved traffic flow, safety improvements, and an investment in community programs. "We put a version of the Guadeloupe in tiles against a wall and we have been begging them not to remove because it's something very important for the area, for the community," Fisher said. Wal-Mart agreed to keep the Virgin Mary mural.

  • Sherman Heights vs. Walmart – Press Conference Today Walmart began demolition of the historic Farmers Market, an iconic building that is an important link to the heritage of the Logan Heights and Sherman Heights communities. This was done without community notice or the preparation of an Environmental Impact Review or even review by the historic resources board which should have occurred prior to approval.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Civil war brewing within OWS? Spring is here and efforts are already being made to revive the Occupy Wall Street movement. When Occupy originally started to sputter, members of the movement insisted that their protests were only readying for round two. But according to some, power struggles have arisen within Occupy. The establishment left is being accused of co-opting the movement in order get President Obama re-elected. Jesse La Greca, activist and writer for Daily Kos, joins us with the latest on the movement.

  • May Day letter This Mayday will be a show of the strength of the working class--the union rank and file, unorganized workers, unemployed workers, immigrant and migrant workers, workers with disabilities, excluded workers, LGBT workers, and all other sections of the majority voice of the 99%. May 1st will allow us to reclaim our power--the power that drives the economy --AND-- the power that can shut it down. This May 1st will be a crucial step in re-building International Workers Day and the spirit of solidarity and struggle.

2012 Apr 22

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Walmart Plans In Sherman Heights Under Fire Community, union and political leaders rallied outside the Farmer's Market Building in Sherman Heights today to bring attention to their battle to keep Walmart from tearing the structure down.

  • Subsidizing Wal-Mart As part of the Center on Policy Initiatives’ efforts to promote sound economic development and land use policy in San Diego, this study looks at the impact of a large subsidized development on the local community and the region.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Citigroup CEO, Directors Sued For Outsized Executive Pay Packages The complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court accuses directors of breaching their fiduciary duties by awarding more than $54 million of compensation in 2011 to the executives, including $15 million to Pandit, though the bank's performance did not necessarily justify it.

  • Civil Disobedience on Wall Street The weekly marches on Wall Street have become increasingly well-organized and effective at getting occupiers in front of the stock exchange for the closing bell every Friday.

  • New Occupy Crackdown Documents Just Obtained by the PCJF Two days before the NYPD’s eviction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, Brookfield Properties' security was in direct communications and sharing information with the US Park Police in Washington DC, and communicating with other cities around the country, according to newly released internal documents from the National Park Service

2012 Apr 23

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

2012 Apr 24

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Bribing Mexico: Walmart Accused of Corruption Eduardo Castro-Wright, the former CEO of Walmart Stores USA, has been accused of leading a $24 million scheme to pay off Mexican city governments in return for permission to open supermarkets around the country. The money was typically paid out to local governments via two of Cicero’s friends from law school: Pablo Alegria Con Alonso and Jose Manuel Aguirre Juarez. These bribes “bought zoning approvals, reductions in environmental impact fees and the allegiance of neighborhood leaders” according to the New York Times. “Permits that typically took months to process magically materialized in days.” The “gestores” helped catapult Walmart into becoming the largest employer in the country with 209,000 workers.

  • Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle In going through Wal-Mart de Mexico’s database of payments, investigators noticed the company was making hefty “contributions” and “donations” directly to governments all over Mexico — nearly $16 million in all since 2003. Back in Bentonville, Mr. Halter and Mr. Ainley wrote confidential reports to Wal-Mart’s top executives in December 2005 laying out all the evidence that corroborated Mr. Cicero — the hundreds of gestor payments, the mystery codes, the rewritten audits, the evasive responses from Wal-Mart de Mexico executives, the donations for permits, the evidence gestores were still being used.

  • The Community Vs. WalMart Saga Continues… Unfortunately, a judge has ruled in favor of Wal Mart at this time. Here is a write up from the action, followed by an article on the judge’s ruling to deny the TRO requested by the Coalition for Safe and Healthy Economic Progress

  • Local Walmart project prevails in court Briggs called the building unique and irreplaceable. "No amount of money, not even Walmart's purse, will put back what they're destroying, and that's what tips the balance of harm to my clients' favor," he said.

  • Orange County quake could be first on recently discovered fault Monday's temblor, centered in the southern suburb of Laguna Niguel, could be the first measured on a fault discovered only 13 years ago, which runs along the coast from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa to San Juan Capistrano -- close to the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Bay Area Nurses Announce May 1st Walkout 4500 nurses in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk out of work on May 1st to protest more than a hundred cuts to health care services and RN standards planned -- despite massive profits -- by their hospital chain, Sutter Health. National Nurses United, which represents thousands of nurses with affiliates across the U.S., has long been an ally of Occupy Wall Street

  • ALEC Hit With IRS Complaint Filed By Common Cause Advocacy group Common Cause said Monday it had filed an IRS complaint accusing ALEC of masquerading as a public charity. ALEC is formed as a nonprofit that brings together lawmakers and private sector organizations to develop legislation and policy. ALEC says its work is not lobbying.

2012 Apr 25

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Procter & Gamble Becomes 13th Company To Drop ALEC Joining a dozen other major corporations, Procter & Gamble decided not to rejoin the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) this year, according to a statement from Color Of Change, which launched a campaign against the shadowy right-wing front group behind state laws restricting access to the ballot and “stand your ground” gun laws.

  • Wal-Mart Bribery Probe: Why the Stakes Are So High The $24 million in illicit payments that Wal-Mart Wal-Mart Stores has been accused of making in Mexico amount to roughly two hours’ revenue for the world’s largest retailer. But if the allegations prove true, the payments could become huge issues for the company, its executives and directors. United States law is among the strictest in the world when it comes to paying bribes to foreign officials.

  • Six Arrested Picketing Wells Fargo Meeting Protesters gathered on a street corner near an inflated rat that had dollar bills coming from side pockets. They held signs that read: "99 percent take over, topple the 1 percent", and "Up with the people, down with the bankers." Police confirmed six arrests for trespassing.

  • Occupy movement targets Wells Fargo meeting in San Francisco Several hundred protesters marched to Wells Fargo Bank headquarters in San Francisco Tuesday and a few managed to gain access to the company's annual shareholder meeting and disrupt proceedings before being escorted out by police, San Francisco Gate reported.

  • What It Really Costs When Walmart Comes to Town The research, done by a Northwest community group, estimates that one Walmart store, which is set to open in a Washington neighborhood, will decrease the community's economic output over 20 years by an estimated $13 million. It also estimates the Walmart will cost the community an additional $14 million in lost wages over the next 20 years.

  • Mass sick day encouraged for May 1 Two Toronto groups are exhorting Canadian workers to call in sick en masse next Tuesday, on May Day, as a protest against "the attacks of the one per cent."

2012 Apr 26

Media: Occupy San Diego

  • Irvine City Council Takes Lead Towards Stopping Likely Nuclear Disaster On April 24, 2012, hundreds of concerned citizens flocked to the Irvine City Council chambers to listen to renowned nuclear experts Arnie Gundersen and S. David Freeman and to support motions by former mayor/current city councilman Larry Agran to prevent San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) from going Fukushima.

  • Irvine City Council opposes San Onofre nuclear plant The Irvine City Council voted Tuesday night to send a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission opposing the San Onofre nuclear plant. The plant has been shutdown since January because of problems with unusual tube wear in steam generators. More than 200 people packed the council chambers for a public hearing on the mostly symbolic letter. The letter opposes the relicensing of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and highlights other concerns over the plant’s operation. During the public hearing, people voiced concerns about evacuation plans, earthquake hazards, health effects of nuclear radiation and safety issues. Many came from San Diego and Riverside Counties.

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • Occupy the Farm Activists Reclaim Prime Urban Agricultural Land in SF Bay Area Hundreds marched yesterday from the Earth Day rally in Berkeley, California to an empty tract of land to establish a new occupation. Immediately upon arrival, in a beautful dsplay of direct action, solidarity, and mutual aid, the Occupiers began clearing and tilling the land for use as a community farm. Already, over 10,000 seeds have been planted on the occupied farm, complete with chickens.

  • Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson's-Related Brain Damage Alarming new research published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology supports the emerging connection between glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, and neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Parkinsonian disorders.

  • Going Dutch: 'Game over for euro if Netherlands quits' The caretaker Dutch Prime Minister is still desperate to push through budget cuts and has called on lawmakers to help him. The government collapsed on Monday when Mark Rutter resigned, as it failed to agree on painful measures demanded by Brussels. The political crisis has already been described as a revolt against enforced EU austerity. UK-based journalist and blogger Neil Clark says there's every chance now the Netherlands will abandon the Euro, which he believes would be disastrous for the single currency.

  • Occupy the Farm: "We're planning the future here." As some of you may have heard, a couple of days ago a coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists took over the Gill Tract, 10 acres of the last remaining Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay area. Dubbed Occupy the Farm, these American patriots are populating this incredibly fertile and precious patch of land with veggie seedlings, chickens, rabbits and good vibes.

  • GE Annual Meeting Interrupted by 99 Percent Protesters Hundreds of protesters affiliated with the "99 Percent" movement disrupted the start of General Electric Co's annual shareholders' meeting in Detroit on Wednesday, in an attack on the largest U.S. conglomerate's low tax rate. Outside Detroit's Renaissance Center, thousands more demonstrators swarmed the area, chanting "This is What Democracy Looks Like." They were surrounded by dozens of police, including three mounted units. While several thousand protesters made noise Wednesday in the city's downtown over feelings General Electric isn't paying enough in taxes, three dozen protestors stood up at the beginning of GE's annual shareholder meeting chanting "pay your fair share"

  • Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, earlier this year sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

2012 Apr 27

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • 3,600 Lockheed Martin Workers Go on Strike in Texas Strikes involving thousands of workers in the "right-to-work" state of Texas are extraordinarily rare. Yet on Monday, 3,600 Lockheed Martin workers, members of IAM Local 776 who make F-35 and F-16 fighter jets in Fort Worth, Texas, went out on strike to protest proposed healthcare and pension cuts.

  • Bay Area Social Workers Strike on May Day! BAMA will be marching in the Regional March for Dignity and Resistance on May 1, 2012 in Oakland. We are very excited because it brings together so many things that we love: activism, justice, immigrants’ rights, labor rights, yelling in the street and more!

  • Occupy Wall Street Betting It All on May Day With Big Targets The event intentionally falls on International Workers Day, which is celebrated in countries worldwide, although not officially in the U.S. Occupy is putting their stamp on it by calling for "A Day Without the 99 Percent": no work, no school, no housework, no shopping. So what's everyone to do?

2012 Apr 28

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • The May 2012 Insurrection For thirty-one magical days beginning this Tuesday, May 1, we take the plunge and Strike! We block the Golden Gate Bridge; occupy a Manhattan-bound tunnel; seize the ports. In 115 cities, we march into banks, erect tents and refuse to leave. We disrupt financial institutions forcing thousands to preemptively close. Five thousand of us pray, dance, sleep on Wall Street and in front of the Fed and if the Bloombergs of the world bring out paramilitary police to intimidate us, we use our social media fire to call out 50,000 more occupiers.

  • Banks cooperate to track Occupy protesters The world's biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said. Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy's May Day planning committee.

  • Insanity: CISPA Just Got Way Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all.

  • How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the 1% While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

  • Russia Stunned After Japanese Plan to Evacuate 40 Million Revealed A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Foreign Ministry on the planned re-opening of talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands during the next fortnight states that Russian diplomats were “stunned” after being told by their Japanese counterparts that upwards of 40 million of their peoples were in “extreme danger” of life threatening radiation poisoning and could very well likely be faced with forced evacuations away from their countries eastern most located cities… including the world’s largest one, Tokyo.

  • Bank CEOs To Tell Fed Regulation Is 'Unrealistic': Report Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and the industry's regulation-basher in chief, has called for a sit-down next week between the heads of four of the nation's biggest banks -- JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley -- and Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Together the four too-big-to-fail banks attending this meeting had $166.2 trillion in "gross notional" exposure to derivatives and the end of 2011, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or about 72 percent of the $230.8 trillion held by all U.S. banks and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign banks.

2012 Apr 29

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

  • The Brief Origins of May Day Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

  • How to beat Citizens United We are about to have the worst presidential campaign money can buy. The Supreme Court’s dreadful Citizens United decision and a somnolent Federal Election Commission will allow hundreds of millions of dollars from a small number of very wealthy people and interests to inundate our airwaves with often vicious advertisements for which no candidate will be accountable.

  • Battle for the Soul of Occupy Occupy will come out swinging May 1 with a General Strike in 115 cities … A month of visceral nonviolent actions will follow. We will flex our tactical muscles, dream of a new world order and #playjazz like never before.

2012 Apr 30

Media: Occupy San Diego

Media: Occupy National and Global

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