The Occupy Movement And The Fight For The American Dream

Who is our economy for, anyway? In the United States We, the People are supposedly in charge and our country and economy are supposed to be managed for the public good. But that isn't how things have been working out, is it?

Let's take a quick look at America over the last few decades. more »

Last week’s Take Back the Capitol action brought two or three thousand unemployed people to the capitol. These representatives of the 99% went to the offices of 99 Senators and Representatives who now represent the 1%, where they were ignored and doors were closed on them. Some members were filmed fleeing down stairwells or hiding in copy rooms. more »

It's like the old-timers always said: Don't quit before the miracle happens.

While the Arab Spring showed that people can still accomplish the impossible, Our political debate was frozen in corporate cynicism. Now everything has changed. For the United States, spring came in autumn. Who says miracles don't happen?

Like a Prayer

A few months ago I prayed for something. Granted, it wasn't the kind of prayer that's sanctioned by any ecclesiastical authority. And, okay, maybe it wasn't exactly a "prayer." I guess the technical term for it would be "blog post." But trust me, it was a prayer.

I'd been asked to write something for the Fourth of July, and I wrote we have to fight a new war, a "war of independence from corporate politics." To be honest, those words felt Utopian even as I wrote them. Still, I never doubted them. The words were born out of the desperate sense that so many of us shared, a sense that our society is collapsing. And that it will keep on collapsing unless we change the way we think.

I wasn't arguing for any particular policy or platform. "The problem isn't just with politicians, or even the system," I said then. "The problem is dependence itself."

Oh, come on. How starry-eyed can you get? Stop depending on politicians? Declare psychic and political independence from celebrity-driven politics and media-made leaders? I'd always considered myself a realist, but this was almost embarrassingly idealistic.

Except for the fact that it happened. more »

I want to thank you, thank you
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you. ~ Natalie Merchant, “Kind and Generous”

This week’s holiday mandates giving thanks. For many Americans, that is complicated by the harsh years since 2008. more »

A government that says corporate money is “speech” dispatches lines of police to stop actual human-being citizens from actually speaking out. It's all right there in front of us: Wall Street got bailouts, the rich got tax cuts, corporations got to buy elections, people got job loss and home loss and pension loss and health care loss, protests got crackdowns. more »

Thursday's National Day Of Action looks like it will be really big. People will be out doing things all over the country. more »

On Wednesday, the day before hundreds of Occupy events are scheduled to break out across the country, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will be holding a hearing highlighting the "jobs, not cuts" theme that is a key part of the Occupy movement. more »

In the dead of night last night, the movement to hold big banks accountable for their crimes took two major hits. Occupy Wall Street activists were swept from Zuccotti Park as radical members of Congress moved to gut funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and advance a series of shocking proposals to roll back financial reform.

Midnight Madness

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"You can't evict an idea whose time has come." That was the message posted on OccupyWallSt.org as early this morning, police began to storm the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in lower Manh more »

When Egyptians stood up to Mubarak they were met with tear gas and clubs. Once upon a time America had freedom of assembly, speech and protest. Even now, as long as protests don't take on the 1%, they are OK. But in today's America-for-the-1% protests, assemblies and speech against plutocatic, 1% rule are met with tear gas and police batons to the head. more »