Free Republic

SACRAMENTO -- David A.R. Barnitz surveys the lawn on the north side of the State Capitol--the handful of tents, the small circle of activists seated in the shade. This is not "the nirvana I was hoping for," he admits. Still, as roughly 50 people gathered Thursday in the sweltering 97-degree heat for the start of the four-day Occupy National Gathering, he was encouraged by the "unity" and "sense of purpose" among those present. "It's Occupy in its evolutionary stages," he says hopefully. In the fall of 2011, thousands gathered in lower Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street, and thousands more staged...

After the so-called death of the Occupy movement, political activism is making a comeback in Sacramento. In June and July, law enforcement arrested 47 protesters over 12 days at the state Capitol. Those hauled away were members of the newly formed 99Rise movement. They peacefully remained in the building under the rotunda after curfew, in solidarity with their goal of getting big money out of politics. That hasn’t happened yet, of course, but the protesters made headlines by lobbying a few bills—and actually getting two passed. Some of these activists marched nearly 500 miles from Los Angeles to Sacramento, and...

Even thousands of miles away from Gaza, citizens live in fear. And that’s just the way Western leaders want it. With their people living in fear, Western leaders escape citizen wrath for their lack of leadership in failing world economies.

After supposed RINO Thad Cochran relied in part on African-American voters to defeat Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel and win the Mississippi GOP’s nomination to the Senate, FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe was very upset. Kibbe was so angry, in fact, that he was moved to petulantly declare, “If the only way the K Street wing of the GOP establishment can win is by courting Democrats to vote in GOP primaries then we’ve already won.” This Black Knight-like declaration of victory following conspicuous defeat was widely mocked as yet another example of the Tea Party’s preference to curate reality.

Social media makes it easier and cheaper to build movements quickly – but bypassing the business of creating decision-making infrastructure means they can disappear just as fast.Where have all the chanters gone; the gospel-minded Christians and the denouncers of ‘banksters’ and tyrants; the homeless and the indebted and unemployed who filled our urban squares in 2011-12, crying out such slogans as "We are the 99 percent" and "The people want the end of the regime"? Where are the leaderless revolutionaries who turned cities around the world upside down? The simple answer is: they were dispersed. When the sometimes public parks...

Every. Damn. Time. Tucked away in their backstory of anti-social behavior, an inconvenient nugget of truth about the couple responsible for killing three people, including two police officers, in Las Vegas:

Suburban Albany is not known for its rip-roaring weekend scene, but this most recent Saturday night, it was the momentary center of the political universe, as an underfunded political party was using its quadrennial convention to try to force America’s most powerful and best-financed governor to submit to its demands. Though the Working Families Party’s conventions are typically low-key affairs, this one had drawn 800 activists and operatives and most of the New York press corps—all to see if the party would endorse conservative Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo or run a third-party candidate against him. In the end, when the...

The occupy movement is circling back on itself with the announcement of the final prosecution of protester Cecily McMillian. Sentenced to three months for elbowing a police officer, those within and without the movement are wondering where they go from here and what it all means. The founders of the movement have moved from cities into the country, and are organizing to occupy the polls to rout out corruption. However, there are questions within the confines of the Electoral College as to how much change this focus can produce. One element of the occupy movement from its headquarters in Zuccotti...

RIKERS ISLAND, New York — Two members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot visited Rikers Island, New York City's main jail complex, to meet with an inmate who is a hero of Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy protestor, 25-year-old Cecily McMillan, was arrested in March 2012 after she elbowed a police officer in the eye. She faces seven years behind bars after a jury found her guilty on May 5, but McMillan and her supporters say she should never have been convicted in the first place. Pussy Riot members Nadezhda "Nadya" Tolokonnikova and Maria "Masha" Alyokhina entered Rikers around...

A jury of eight women and four men took less than three hours to decide that the protester, Cecily McMillan, 25, was responsible for assaulting the officer, rejecting her contention that she had reacted instinctively when he grabbed her breast during a protest on St. Patrick’s Day. Ms. McMillan had said she could not distinctly recall what happened amid the chaos of the night.

Monday night, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes used an essay on Slate about the Bundy Ranch standoff and race as a jumping off point to discuss how this story would be different if rancher Cliven Bundy’s armed supporters were black. “When is it that people take up arms against the federal or state government, point their arms at federal agents and face no consequence for it?” Hayes asked. “The answer is to that is hardly ever.” Hayes went on to imagine how Fox News react to the New Black Panthers if they decided to “greet law enforcement with long guns.” Or what...

The controversy over a Nevada rancher’s decades-long use of public land without paying federal grazing fees has quickly become a national issue — one that Glenn Beck on Monday urged Americans to fully understand before taking a side on. “We did some research online with PsyID today, and found that there’s about 10 or 15 percent of the people who are talking about this online that are truly frightening,” Beck said on his television program. “They don’t care what the facts are. They just want a fight.” Beck said there are many “decent, small-government proponents from groups like the Tea...

It is the most important question being asked of dozens of New Yorkers lined up as potential jurors for the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street activist accused of assaulting a police officer: what do you think of her protest movement? Unfortunately for those keen on the swift procession of justice, a series of Manhattan residents who presented themselves at the criminal courthouse this week declared that they strongly disagreed with it – and could not promise to be impartial about one of its members. “I’m involved in Wall Street things. I’m on the Wall Street side, not...

Springtime is here. The birds are singing, temperatures are on the rise and the Occupy movement is emerging from winter hibernation, calling for a worldwide “wave of action” Friday to re-launch anti-capitalism protests. Occupiers have been instructed by the movement’s official Twitter feed to congregate at Zuccotti Plaza in New York City Friday morning. The plan is to march to nearby Federal Plaza. Zuccotti was the stronghold of Occupy Wall Street the last two years. An associated Facebook page announced a protest against the “regressive 1% agenda of Governor Andrew Cuomo and for a truly progressive one that includes the...

Carl Gibson, co-founder of U.S. Uncut, is joining with other Occupy Wall Street organizers to launch a new populist political party. While more details (including the name of the party and the identities of other key organizers) will be available when the group launches on March 20, the party will be explicitly anti-capitalist. Says Gibson: "A new party that actively opposes capitalism and unites people around the basic ideas of meeting human needs would be widely respected and immediately acknowledged. This new party could stand apart from the two corporate-owned parties by refusing to take campaign donations from corporations, banks...

Police estimated there were between 40 and 60 people still at the site before they moved in to evict them, with only around 20 actual protesters, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported — a figure disputed by Occupy organizers

SEATTLE — Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state “The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

Occupy Wall Street buys $15 million of Americans' medical debt Tue, Nov 12 2013By Elizabeth Dilts(Reuters) - An Occupy Wall Street spin-off group has bought up $14.7 million worth of Americans' personal medical debt and forgiven it over the last year as part of its Rolling Jubilee project, the group announced Monday.The Rolling Jubilee project, organized by Occupy Wall Street's Strike Debt group, has so far spent $400,000 to buy the debt, in the process relieving 2,693 people of the money they owed for medical services Occupy thinks should be free."Think of it as a bailout of the 99 percent...

Colorado - The Gilmore case attracted national attention because he supported demonstrations at an Occupy Wall Street encampment a block away from where the fire was started. Occupy activists were protesting against economic inequality and government policies favoring the wealthy. The early-morning fire caused an estimated $10 million damage to a four-story apartment complex under construction and the occupied Penny Flats condominium and retail building next door.

The House Oversight Committee wants to find out why the Park Service behaved so bizarrely. ... Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a former prosecutor, almost drove National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis into incoherence with his relentless questioning. Gowdy wanted to know why Jarvis had allowed “pot-smoking” Occupy Wall Street protesters to camp overnight illegally in Washington’s McPherson Square park for 100 days, yet put up barricades to keep veterans out of war memorials on the first day of the shutdown. By not issuing a single citation to the Occupy campers, Gowdy argued, the Park Service was treating them...