Dan Bluemel: Upset with Wells Fargo’s foreclosure practices, protesters held a demonstration on May Day that briefly shut down one of the bank’s branches in downtown Los Angeles.
LA’s Downtown Business Leaders Give ArtWalk Protesters the Brush-Off
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Dan Bluemel: Rampant hooliganism will not be tolerated in downtown Los Angeles; it could interfere with commerce.
L.A. Police Chalking Arrests Spark Uprising
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Dan Bluemel: A protest over activists being arrested for chalking messages on sidewalks erupted into a near-riot last Thursday in downtown Los Angeles.
Elections and History
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Mark Naison: The fate of grassroots movements often depends on those who hold public office, especially those who control the power to suppress such movement through the application of armed force.
Stopping Foreclosures, One House at a Time
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Sylvia Moore: As Americans, we have to ask ourselves, how long are our lawmakers going to continue to allow these too-big-to-fail institutions escape accountability?
Occupy Fights Foreclosure Fighting to Save Defrauded Family’s Home
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Cheryl Aischele: Occupy Fights Foreclosures (OFF), a sub-committee of Occupy LA, joined neighbors in the South Adams community to help a widow who fell victim to foreclosure fraud by at least three companies.
Kamala Harris: Foreclosure Settlement Scores Points, Raises Questions
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Sharon Kyle: Kamala Harris’ broad smile and “down home” style was gobbled up by the crowd as members of the African American Caucus listened and showed support for their Attorney General.
6 Things Obama Must Do to Bring Back Disillusioned Activists
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Mark Naison: It’s time that liberals stop trying to scare disillusioned activists with the prospect of a Republican presidency and start trying to scare the White House and the Democratic leadership into doing something to show they are worthy of activists votes.
They’d Like to “Occupy” Their Own Homes
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Paulina Gonzalez: House by house, block by block, the residents of these South Central neighborhoods are being pushed out by landlords eager to capitalize on USC’s expansion.
Friday Feedback: What’s Next for Occupy?
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Friday Feedback: To just hold signs and chant about being the 99% and it being so unfair may have reached the point of diminishing returns while the mercurial attention of the American media and public is turning to the next shiny object.
My Barack Obama Problem
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Mark Naison: The straw that broke the camel’s back, after many disappointments, was the image of the President regaling a $2,500 a plate dinner in San Francisco while Occupy Oakland was being attacked by an army of police.
Occupy: You Can’t Evict an Idea
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Ruth Rosen: Any successful movement must change the national conversation and create and dominate the terms of debate. This the Occupy movement has successfully done, for now.
LA City Council Shames the U.S. Supreme Court
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On the issue of corporate personhood, is the Los Angeles City Council smarter than the United States Supreme Court? Incredibly, Yes! Last week in a huge victory for Angelenos, the Los Angeles City Council voted against the 2010 Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case that found that corporations were entitled to the same rights [...]
Occupy LA Backed Corporate Personhood Resolution as Eviction Loomed
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Michael R. Evans: On the night that Occupy Los Angeles protesters were given as a deadline to begin vacating the land around City Hall, their general assembly unanimously passed a resolution to end corporate personhood through constitutional amendment
Detained LA Occupy Protesters Punished Out of Sight
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Yasha Levine: The police attack on Occupy LA was much more violent than reported, with most of the abuse happening while the protesters were in police custody, completely outside the range of the media.
Los Angeles: Occupy Gridlock
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Stephen Box: The Occupy LA movement will wither on the dusty and dead lawn of LA’s City Hall if it does not return its focus to establishing common ground by returning its focus to the systemic issues that resonate through the City of Los Angeles, the State of California and the United States as a whole
Let’s Occupy Together
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David Kristjanson-Gural: Corporate news stations present themselves as trustworthy and unbiased, but they are owned by large multinational corporations like General Electric and Westinghouse, and these are the folks that are benefitting from the policies that the protesters decry.
Charlie Beck’s Anniversary: A Walk in the Park
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Stephen Box: Beck occupies a unique position in the world of Occupy protests and is one of the only Police Chiefs in the country to establish a relationship with protesters that is based on respect and dignity.
The Battles of Occupy Portland
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Shamus Cooke: The Occupy Movement will be crushed if the demands being fought for do not connect with working people. A key characteristic of any powerful social movement is the appearance of successive, large demonstrations that draw in new layers of working people, students, and the elderly.
Maybe They Should Occupy LA’s Neighborhood Councils
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Stephen Box: Occupy LA has faced one of the most potent of enemies, an ambivalent audience, one that is most likely to respond with a tired dismissal based on aesthetics or a weary look of disbelief as issues such as unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness, collapsing infrastructure and a collapsing economy are presented as a call to action.
The Troops and Occupy Wall Street
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Tina Dupuy: Meet the new face of Occupy Wall Street: Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine and Iraq War vet who was shot in the head with a “non-lethal round” during a raid on Occupy Oakland last week.
Student Protesters Locked Out in Occupy DC
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Lee Fang: Friday afternoon, a group of about seventy-five students mobilized at the OccupyDC camp at McPherson Square to raise the issue of crushing student debt.
Occupy Wall Street’s “Gullible” and “Unsophisticated” Protesters
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Joseph Palermo: Prosperity never “trickles down.” And people are finally catching on. The housing bubble went too far. It destroyed too many lives and livelihoods to go unquestioned and unpunished, as Wall Street (and Washington) would like it.
Why Libertarians Should Not Scorn Occupy Wall Street
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Wendy McElroy: Protesters have been maced, beaten, and arrested by the police for peacefully exercising their right to free assembly and free speech. Libertarians who put their disapproval first and foremost are missing the proper emphasis.
Arab Spring: The Kings and the Presidents
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John Peeler: Just as with the fall of the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe, success in Tunisia encouraged protesters elsewhere; success in the most important Arab state, Egypt, meant that success was conceivable anywhere.
State Department Approved Export of U.S.-Made Tear Gas to Egyptian Gov’t
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Marian Wang: The American-made tear gas used to disperse pro-democracy protestors in Egypt earlier this week was sold to the country after government review.
Koch Brothers Protest Rally
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Thousands of protesters gathered this weekend in Palm Springs to express opposition to the secret meeting held by David and Charles Koch. The Koch brothers, owners of the 2nd largest privately held corporation in the United States, were conducting their bi-annual retreat where they and a cadre of well heeled power brokers hold strategy sessions.
French Protestors: “Where Are You Americans?”
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Steven Hill: “Where are you Americans? Why aren’t Americans out in the streets? If Americans are angry, why aren’t they out in the streets like we are?” He said something quickly to his comrades in French, then reverted back to English. “It’s like Americans have gone to sleep or something. You used to have many protests.”
Time for a More Militant American Left?
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Sylvia Moore: The American left must be feared and respected by the politicians — instead of ignored and insulted. The way to do that is to be defiant in who we are as liberals and what we stand for.
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Friday Feedback: Occupy Wall Street’s Gullible & Unsophisticated Protesters
Friday Feedback: This week, Hollis Steward comments on Joe Palermo’s article, “Occupy Wall Street’s “Gullible” and “Unsophisticated” Protesters,” followed by rejoinders by hwood007 and Cindy-Roy.