All posts in Van Jones

May Day Directory: Occupy General Strike In Over 125 Cities

This post is meant as a warning and not as an endorsement of the OWS movement which is a an organized effort by the unions and the far left to cause massive disruption and is an attack on the American people.

may day poster

While American corporate media has focused on yet another stale election between Wall Street-financed candidates, Occupy has been organizing something extraordinary: the first truly nationwide General Strike in U.S. history. Building on the international celebration of May Day, past General Strikes in U.S. cities like Seattle and Oakland, the recent May 1st Day Without An Immigrant demonstrations, the national general strikes in Spain this year, and the on-going student strike in Quebec, the Occupy Movement has called for A Day Without the 99% on May 1st, 2012. This in and of itself is a tremendous victory. For the first time, workers, students, immigrants, and the unemployed from over 125 U.S. cities will stand together for economic justice.

See below for what we believe to be the most comprehensive list yet compiled of cities where Occupy May Day events are being planned, as well as other resources. Note: This is a living document. Check back for updates! If you have any additional events, please let us know in the comment section of this article. You are encouraged to share this page in as many ways as possible!

General Resources

Key City-wide May Day Sites

Show Your Solidarity!

Denver – May 1st General Strike

together, we the 99%, make the world go round

Endorse May Day

When and Where

May 1, 2012 — all day
Events start in Civic Center Park at Noon

 RSVP on Facebook

Contact Event Coordinators

mayday@occupydenver.org

Endorse this Event

To endorse this event, download the May Day Statement of Support (PDF) or fill out the online statement of support.

Opportunities for organizations to have a presence
at the event are available. Please contact the event coordinators above to arrange.

Current List of Endorsements

 

Overview

At noon on May 1st, we rally in Civic Center Park and make our voices heard. At 12:30 we march. At 1:30 we return to Civic Center Park and occupy until dusk with teach-ins, music, trading stations, food, and activities for all. Come together and let it be known that our labor is what makes this world function!

Get Involved

In recognizing the power of our labor, we also recognize that all of us have skills we contribute to the world. You can share that skill by contributing to the events of May Day in the park. The events of May Day will encompass all forms of public engagement using our shared power as workers. If you have a skill to share, contact the Occupy Denver May Day working group at mayday@occupydenver.org. All are welcome, so come down to Civic Center Park and join in the events taking place!

Communities Unite on May 1st

In solidarity with cities worldwide, the diverse communities of Denver will gather together as one powerful force demanding equality and justice for all. Around the world May 1st is known as International Worker’s Day. Recently in America, this day has become recognized as a time for standing up for immigrants’ rights. While fighting our struggles we’ve come to realize that our problems are connected, as are the solutions. We unite in action with Occupiers and Workers all over the globe fighting for a better tomorrow

Our homes are foreclosed, while banks are bailed out. Unemployment remains high, while the 1% continues to accumulate wealth. Federal funding for education is continuously cut, while the military budget skyrockets.

The strategy of divide and conquer has been used against us for too long; these created illusions keep us separate. The few who hold unprecedented power and wealth become deeply threatened as we realize they are reliant on us, WE HAVE THE TRUE POWER. Let them feel threatened, come together and join in solidarity over our common causes: HUMAN RIGHTS and ECONOMIC JUSTICE.

Stand up and take part in an action that demonstrates our true strength. Join us at Civic Center Park for May Day; we are the ones we have been waiting for!

A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each group component and common interest into which they merge. –MLK, Jr.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Van Jones: Conservatives Willing To “Kill Children” For Jobs…

New tone.

Via BreitbartTV:

Speaking at the New York City Green Festival April 21st, Van Jones (Obama’s former Green Jobs Czar) claimed the right is waging an open campaign and willing to kill children to weaken the EPA to create a new job.

Enhanced by Zemanta

City-funded activist group teaches homeless how to invade apartments

EXCLUSIVE

It’s breaking and entering for dummies. Picture the Homeless, a Bronx nonprofit that has received at least $240,000 in taxpayer money in the last five years, is giving a crash course on squatting — and city-owned buildings are a prime target. Two weeks ago, board member Andres Perez held a teach-in on how to wrest “control” of vacant apartments. He called it “homesteading.”

J.C. RICE VICTIMIZED: Squatters turned Arlington Village in Brooklyn into a prostitution den, according to a resident.

“The best time to enter a building is in the late hours,” he advised a group of about 20, who gathered in front of the half-empty East New York housing complex Arlington Village.

“You make sure you have your proper tools. You remove the chains and padlock, and then you go in.” He then led them through the next steps — including filling out a change-of-address form at the post office and setting up utilities. After that, “nine out of 10 times the courts will allow you to be able to have control of the property,” he said. But squatting school outraged legal residents of Arlington Village.

PHOTOS: J.C. RICE LAW, SHUCKS: Andres Perez is part of a city-funded program teaching people to break into vacant properties.

“I can’t let nobody squat where I live,” said Pete Rolon, 64, a 35-year resident who claimed pimps had grabbed two apartments in the complex. “There were hookers. They were smoking crack. There were condoms all over the floor. There were hundreds of them.” He remembers when the complex of 12 two-story, red-brick buildings was filled with families and children playing. Police and residents eventually forced the sex-trade squatters out last fall, according to Rolon. Mohammed Hossain, the super at Arlington, where pads go for $600 to $1,000 per month, said complaints about homeless people breaking in to steal pipes and metal fixtures are common. “The homeless people, they have no right to be squatting here,” he said. “If they pay rent, that’s different.” Residents also aren’t happy about city tax money going to a group that preaches squatting. “That’s not right,” said one longtime resident. “That these guys are teaching classes on this — that’s ridiculous.” The Web site for Picture the Homeless boasts a list of accomplishments that includes sending “delegations to the World Social Forum in Brazil.” Perez, 46, a former city Housing Authority worker, said the group has “two major campaigns.” One is dedicated to opposing the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” policy. The other involves schooling people about “warehoused” property. Homesteading, he lectured, is a permanent occupation, while squatting is only temporary “clubhousing.” “The best properties are city-owned properties or bank-owned properties,” he said. “They warehouse these properties. They’re sitting on them.” Picture the Homeless’s annual taxpayer funding is approved by the City Council and administered through the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “We absolutely don’t condone the practice of squatting,” said HPD spokesman Eric Bederman. “It’s illegal, and it’s dangerous.” Bederman added that his agency has no control over Picture the Homeless’s funding. “It’s the City Council’s decision,” he said. Robin Levine, a City Council spokeswoman, said, “We’re deeply troubled by reports that Picture the Homeless is instructing New Yorkers in how to engage in dangerous and illegal activities. If these reports are in fact true, they call the group’s entire funding into question.” mgartland@nypost.com

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/squat_the_heck_PkPnYm4W9CFGWgSg6gpHiL#ixzz1qBs1wV1d

Enhanced by Zemanta

Van Jones: Obama Opponents “Hate Everybody In America”…

You know, because the left is renowned for their patriotism.

“I was there for 6 months. Best 6 months of my life, followed by the worst two weeks. … What I saw there is why I am here today. I saw some of the most beautiful people, some of the most well intentioned people, some of the smartest people ever to serve in our government, be stopped in their tracks, stopped in their tracks, by people who mean us no good. People who claim to be patriots but seem to hate everybody in America.”

HT: Ben Shapiro

Enhanced by Zemanta

More than 100 Occupy Oakland protesters arrest, tear gas deployed, American flag burned

Nancy Pelosi: God bless occupy Wall Street protestors

Obama Tells Occupiers: ‘You’re The Reason I Ran For Office’

Via: Inside Bay Area

OAKLAND — Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall, stole an American flag from the council chamber and set it afire Saturday night punctuating a wild day on the streets of the East Bay city in which police deployed tear gas, arrested more than 100 marchers and dodged hurling objects.

Demonstrators spent the day trying to break into a convention center, and temporarily occupying City Hall and a YMCA, all while snaking around lines of riot-clad police.

It marked the first major clashes between protesters and police since November and left three officers with minor injuries, as protesters threw bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans and “improvised explosive devices,” and lit flares, police said. Late Saturday, paramedics wheeled a pregnant protester away from Frank Ogawa Plaza after witnesses said she was hit in the kidney by a police baton. She yelled: “Police did this to me!”

The first large skirmish of the day took place on the front steps of the Oakland Museum of California. Police arrested 19 marchers during that confrontation.

Later, about 100 protesters were arrested after police ordered them to disperse at the YMCA, 2350 Broadway, police said.
The rest of the marchers headed to City Hall, broke into the building and exited with numerous American flags, which were quickly burned. Police regained control of the building and guarded the trashed lobby.

The events followed a week where Occupy Oakland organizers announced plans to take over a vacant building to create the movement’s headquarters, with plans for a two-day party. Police and city officials took a hard stance and vowed to not allow it.

In what has become a weekly march, about 250 protesters gathered around noon at Frank Ogawa Plaza for a rally, according to a city of Oakland news release. At 1:30 p.m., the group began marching with a crowd of about 450 protesters. Forty-five minutes later, some of the marchers entered the campus of Laney College, city officials said.
That was when police first fired tear gas, a witness said.

At 2:50 p.m., marchers began tearing down perimeter fences around the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, city officials said. Police declared an unlawful assembly and fired more tear gas.

A demonstrator named Ian from Marin County said police fired rubber bullets as well, after protesters began hurling items at them.
Sixteen of the protesters were arrested in that confrontation at 10th and Oak streets, mostly for failure to disperse and assaulting a police officer. The three other arrests were scattered along the march route, a police source said.

The most seriously injured officer received a cut to his face that required stitches after a protester hit him with a bicycle. The other two injured officers received bruises and one injured his hand, the police source said.

Police closed numerous streets around the convention center.
“The City of Oakland welcomes peaceful forms of assembly and freedom of speech, but acts of violence, property destruction and overnight lodging will not be tolerated,” the news release stated. “The Oakland Police Department is also committed to facilitating peaceful forms of expression while protecting personal safety and property through ethical and constitutional policing.”

By 4 p.m., most of the Occupy crowd, which had grown to about 500, returned to Frank Ogawa Plaza. After regrouping, the marchers headed out again and congregated at the Oakland YMCA.

Around 6:30 p.m., police ordered protesters to disperse and those who remained were arrested, with some hiding in the YMCA building. As police processed the 100 or so arrestees, the rest of the demonstrators headed to City Hall where they broke into the lobby.
The police department received heavy criticism late last year for breaking up earlier protests, including from the mayor. Earlier this month, a court-appointed monitor submitted a report to a federal judge that included “serious concerns” about the department’s handling of the Occupy protests.
Check back for more details.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Socialist SEIU Leader on the Future of Unions and the O.W.S. Movement

Via New Zeal, By   

Français : Logo SEIU

Jessica Shearer, labor and faith organizer, speaking at Personal Democracy Media’s From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street and Beyond on December 12th, 2011.

Shearer has been active in SEIUDemocratic Socialists of AmericaWorking Families PartyOccupy Wall Street and in 2008, ran Barack Obama‘s campaign in eight states.

She makes some very interesting revelations about October 2010′s union organized One Nation Rally and the future of unions and the Occupy movement.

Enhanced by Zemanta

SEIU Job Description: Train & Lead Members to Occupy State Buildings & Takeover Banks

If there was ever any question whether the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a radical and militantly Marxist union, this SEIU jobs description for a Senior/Lead Internal Organizer, Home Care, posted on the SEIU’s website should remove all doubts.

The SEIU is advertising on its site for SEIU Healthcare 775NW in Washington State. Among the job duties listed includes the training of members in civil-disobedience, peaceful resistance (how to get arrested), as well as the occupation and takeover banks and state buildings [emphasis added]:

Leadership Development:

• Leading members and organizers to develop curriculum and lead leadership development trainings

Train and lead members in non-violent civil disobedience, such as occupying state buildings and banks, and peaceful resistance.

• Implement leadership program with the goal of engaging 10% of members in active leadership and majority participation

Member Mobilization:

Execute field plans mobilizing members around political campaigns, annual Leadership Convention, lobby days, regional meetings.

• Execute field plans for special campaigns including contract campaigns, ballot initiatives, COPE contributions, general membership growth and the broader campaign to fight for a fair economy.

Plan and execute strategic direct action field plans including banner drops, bank takeovers, and capitol occupations with membership, other local unions, and coalition partners

Additional Responsibilities:

• Assignments to electoral, legislative and growth new organizing campaigns as required

• Other duties as assigned

Since the SEIU has already shown it has no respect for private property, the question that lingers is: Will 2013 be the year when a real attorney general finally begins to look at the entire SEIU structure with RICO in mind?

Enhanced by Zemanta

OCCUPIERS PLAN COORDINATED PORT SHUTDOWNS STRETCHING FROM ANCHORAGE TO SAN DIEGO

(The Blaze/AP)-  Anti-Wall Street protesters up and down the West Coast are joining an effort to blockade some of the nation’s busiest ports from Anchorage to San Diego.
(file photo: Nov. 2 Port of Oakland)

Here is a video giving an overview of the planned port shutdowns:

Demonstrators were to gather to march on the Port of Oakland, which Occupy protesters successfully shut down in November. Marchers also descended on the sprawling port complex spanning Los Angeles and Long Beach as the work day begins.

Occupy groups also planned blockades in Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia, and in Portland, Ore.

The protests being billed as action against “Wall Street on the waterfront” are perhaps the Occupy movement’s most dramatic gesture since police raids sent most remaining camps scattering last month. Demonstrators began forming those camps around the country about two months ago to protest what they call corporate greed and economic inequality.

Kari Koch, organizer with Shut Down the Ports Working Group of Occupy Portland, said by shutting down the port, Wall Street will be unable to create profit.

“We will not stand for corporate profits at the expense of working people, we will not stand for attacks on workers, and we will not allow our schools to be closed, social services slashed, and families to be impoverished by your greed!” Koch said Monday in statement.

Organizers hope to draw thousands to stand in solidarity with longshoremen and port truckers they say are being exploited.

“Taking on and blocking the 1 percent at the port is also taking on the global issue of exploitation by capitalism,” said Occupy Oakland blockade organizer Barucha Peller.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents many thousands of longshoremen up and down the West Coast, has distanced itself from the shutdown effort. The union’s president suggested in a letter to members that protesters were attempting to co-opt the union’s cause to advance their own agenda.

Protesters have cited a longstanding dispute between longshoremen at the Port of Longview in Washington and grain exporter EGT as a key reason for the blockades. Shutdown supporters say they’re not asking longshoremen to organize a work stoppage in violation of their contract but simply asking them to exercise their free speech rights and stay off the job, in keeping with the union’s historic tradition of activism.

If protesters muster large enough numbers to block port entrances, arbitrators could declare unsafe working conditions, which would allow port workers to stay home.

Organized labor appears divided over the port shutdown effort. In Oakland, which saw strong union support for the Nov. 2 general strike that culminated in the closing of the port, the city‘s teachers union is backing Monday’s action, while the county’s construction workers have come out against the shutdown, saying the port has provided jobs to many unemployed workers and apprentices.

The Port of Oakland has appealed to city residents not to join the blockade, which they say could hurt the port’s standing among customers and cost local jobs.

“The port is going to do all that it can to keep operations going. Our businesses need to hear that. Our workers need to know that,” said Port of Oakland spokesman Isaac Kos-Read.

Officials at West Coast ports say they have been coordinating with law enforcement agencies as they prepare for possible disruptions. Protesters say police violence against blockades in any city will trigger an extension of blockades in other cities as a show of resolve.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Cops Throw Out Protesters At Glenn Beck Book Signing

Cops Throw Out Protesters At Glenn Beck Book Signing… Occupy Tallahassee, Occupy Wall Street.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Dead Movement Walking: Top Ten New Media Moments That Brought Down #OccupyWallStreet

 Big Jounalism

Now that they’ve officially been hung out to dry by both the elite media and the Left, Occupy Wall Street has apparently decided to die with a whimper instead of with dignity. Five lonely Occupiers in ChicagoThree in Indiana. And when that evil (not really) Rush Limbaugh makes an appearance in the very heart of Occupied territory, New York City, and only a dozen or so neo-hippie crybabies bother to show up, methinks that’s a death rattle I hear.

But you have to remember ’twas New Media that killed Obama’s astro-turfed, anti-American army of poopers, rapists, vandals, drug abusers and trespassers — and that without New Media the MSM would’ve gotten away with their evil (yes, really) master plan, which was to recreate the sixties’ anti-war movement. The whole of the MSM intended to give these Occupy degenerates the same oxygen they gave anti-war degenerates forty years ago. The worst people in the world would be spoon fed the encouragement and legitimacy required to spin them into something they are not. And all of this was going to be made possible through the covering up of a hundreds of sins both big and small.

The only problem for the MSM, though, is that this isn’t the sixties and, therefore, they no longer control every portal of mass communication. Thus, armed with our own cameras, the power to disseminate information without funneling through the media’s corrupt filter, and armed with THE TRUTH — video by photo by investigative report, Occupy collapsed under the exposed weight of their own hypocrisy, noxious beliefs, and craven misdeeds.

In the form of a victory lap, here are my top ten New Media moments:

10. The Copper-Pooper Photo That Went ‘Round the World

A moment captured on film frequently comes to define a movement. Just as the flag-raising at Iwo Jima defined WWII and one brave soul stopping a contingent of tanks defined Tienanmen Square, so will the Copper-Pooper Photo forever define Occupy Wall Street. Anarchy, depravity, incivility, and the utter pointlessness of it all captured forever.

The photo might have been snapped by the mainstream media, but it was New Media that wouldn’t and will never let it die.

 

9. #OccupyWallStreet Cult Chant: ‘You Can Have Sex With Animals’

—–

Again and again, we were told the lie that Occupy was “just like the Tea Party,” a spontaneous grassroots uprising. But very early in the movement, this video went viral and told anyone with an IQ above room temperature that something was amiss at #OccupyStepford. This was our first glimpse at the real Occupy: drones, minions, dupes, and pathetic lost souls willing to do anything to conform and belong… including advocating sex with animals.

Another important thing happened with this video no one would’ve seen had Al Gore’s invention not made viral sensations possible and MSM coverups impossible. This initiated the ridicule of Occupy, and once your movement becomes a joke, it’s over before it begins. Twitter was invented for exactly this kind of thing, and if you go to the#OccupyWallStreet tag, you’ll see that the mockery is and has been one of the most potent slayers of Obama’s Army of the Pathetic.

8. #Occupy Trust Fund Baby

—–

The original video went viral and Occupy was certain they had found their poster boy. Naturally, the MSM played right along, but unfortunately for them, it’s not their rodeo anymore. After it was discovered that this poor tortured soul was in fact Edward T. Hall III, a graduate of Columbia and a trust fund baby, Occupy and their media allies couldn’t get to the memory-hole fast enough.

7. ‘New York Times’ Reporter Busted As #Occupy Activist, Supporter

 

—–
As I said above, every movement requires a defining moment, and New Media’s movement to prove that Old Media was working as Occupy’s propaganda arm was crystallized for all the world to see with this original piece of reporting.

6. Anti-Defamation League Condemns #Occupy Anti-Semitism

—–

The corrupt MSM’s favorite game during the rise of the Tea Party was to cry racism where there was none. Furthermore, the MSM gleefully spread defamatory and provable lies which they only corrected with about 1/1000th the effort they put into spreading them (if they corrected them at all). When it came to Occupy’s troubling and foundational anti-Semitism, however, the MSM not only refused to expose it, they went so far as to excuse it. A phony racist narrative wasn’t able to destroy the Tea Party, but exposing Occupy as more than a little tolerant and accepting of Jew hatred would do the burgeoning movement more damage than it could likely handle. Therefore, the MSM did everything in their power to cover it up.

Conservative New Media wouldn’t stand for it, though, and after some pressure was applied using something called facts, the ADL spoke out.

Though the corrupt MSM wouldn’t give the ADL statement even a hundredth the coverage they gave to the NAACP’s Tea Party lies, they were still obliged to cover it and yet another wheel came off the MSM’s phony Occupy narrative-wagon.

5. Exposure of #Occupy Sexual Assaults, Including Alleged Rape of a Deaf Man

—–

As Americans, we’re all pretty willing to look past a little reefer smoking and some late-night drumming, but only the MSM and elected Democrats are willing to ignore report after report of one sexual assault after another. While those horrible people over at Politico were writing a hundred-plus stories about 15 year-old sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain and the rest of the craven MSM was gleefully joining in the pile-on, actual rapes, gropes, and acts of public masturbation involving children were all but ignored.

Conservative New Media, however, actually is outraged by an organization tolerant of rape and child abuse, so we used every power at our disposal, and the truth got out.

4. #OccupyOakland Threatens Reporter With Physical Violence

—–

This put to bed the lie the MSM was spreading about Occupiers being nothing more than a peaceful bunch of neo-hippies anguished over social injustice.

What New Media did here was what the MSM refused to do — take a local report and turn it a national news story. The above video clip was disseminated nationwide over the Intertubes and the effect was two-fold. First, it put a different face on the Occupiers, and secondly, it let the rest of the country know the MSM wasn’t telling them the full truth. “Why isn’t Brian Williams telling me this?” people asked. “Why am I only hearing about this online?”

Remember, any damage done to the MSM’s credibility is a blow against Occupy and a victory for America.

3. The ‘Kent State Moments’ That Collapsed Under New Media Scrutiny

—–

Right in the middle of this video’s MSM world tour, New Media found the full video that showed an entirely different story. The police officers were, in fact, not beating defenseless Occupiers, they were acting in self-defense. Once New Media got the word out, another important part of the Left’s sinister plan collapsed. The idea, of course, was to recreate the sixties and look for that Kent State moment (as this blithering idiot suggested). Demonize the cops, victimize the protesters, and you got yourself a second wind.

What ended up happening, however, was just the opposite. Because the malicious editing of that video was exposed, Occupy and their media allies lost ever more credibility with the public, and every attempt afterward to gin up a Kent State moment was pretty much met with indifference.

The MSM gave it the old college try again, though, with the “infamous” pepper spray incident at UC Davis. This was the MSNBC meme for at least two days, until…

—–

Nice try, MSM. But we’re all journalists now. We all have cameras, we all have Internet access with which to distribute our own reporting, and we have the truth.

You lose.

2. The Occupy Wall Street Rap Sheet

When it came to the Tea Party, the MSM would take a single incident — an outlandish sign, for example — and use it in an attempt to smear the entire movement. When it came to Occupy the media did the exact opposite. The MSM would dutifully report each criminal incident but just as dutifully make sure America never connected the dots that would define these degenerates for the thugs they really are.

New Media made this coverup impossible.

Through the power of Twitter, email, and crowd-sourcing, The Rap Sheet was created, and the dots were (and are) updated and connected on a daily basis for all of New Media to spread and the world to see.

1. ‘Crowdsource This’: Occupy’s Astro-turf Exposed In Massive Email Dump

There it was in black and white — the truth. This was no grassroots movement and it was about as spontaneous as a royal wedding. Without New Media, these documents would’ve lied there like a toxic dump our MSM Overlords never would’ve touched. But New Media was not only able to report on it, we were able to make every document available to every single online citizen.

Occupy’s most important narrative went up in smoke, and suddenly all the other pieces came together: the criminality, cult-like chanting, anti-Americanism, Marxism, anti-Semitism, sexual depravity and overall stench suddenly made perfect sense. This wasn’t some spontaneous movement generated by youthful idealism. This was the left, and this is who the left is.

—–

 

By the hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands, citizen journalists took everything listed above (and more) and then went around the corrupt MSM in order to let the word go forth.

While the mainstream media told their lies and half-truths and chose whatever context would fit their pro-Occupy narrative, within seconds, real truths were emailed, posted on Facebook pages and blogs, tweeted and re-tweeted. With lightning speed, photographs and videos told the story the MSM attempted to cover up….

…and all of this was generated by We The People.

Old Media never had a chance.

Enhanced by Zemanta