Salt City Sinner

According to the irradiated, electronic grapevine: There will be an Emergency action meeting at the Fed occupation site tonight at 8 PM MST. Please forward to all applicable people. No outside media. Fed location:

I've written a bit about the People's Library at #OccupySLC's Base Camp. In addition to having an excellent selection of take-one-leave-one books on a variety of topics, the Library also has a big box of zines, also with a take-one-leave-one policy. I've even been sort of "following" the Portland Gospel, a small #OccupyPortland zine that has, by some bizarre underground railroad of #Occupants, shown up weekly at #OSLC's Library. I mentioned in my last post that a lot of the anti-fed stuff I had seen packing the literature table had been gloriously replaced by a fresh bloom of anarchist leaflets. I thought I would show a few of them here, along with one interesting publishing identifier - but we'll get to that. First off, none of the following should be taken as representative of #Occupy, #OccupySLC, #OccupyWallStreet - hell, of anything, really, beyond an open forum where people can drop of leaflets that provides us with a brief snapshot of...

I stopped by #OccupySLC for a few hours yesterday, as has been my habit of late. Unfortunately due to prior commitments, I couldn't make it to Pioneer Park until after the march had left and had to skip the G-20 "Teach In" (which I couldn't track down at Pioneer - I'm not sure if it happened or not, but I'd like to know). Anyone who is interested - and I include my Peaceful Uprising cohorts in this - should sign up to teach a class at the free school. They need instructors, and, more importantly, they need good instructors. Any somewhat salient topic you like - come and spread the knowledge! I did manage to touch base briefly with the Circle-A Cafe and the donation center to see what #Occupy's needs are going to be as the weather turns. The donations that would be most welcomed by the kitchen team are as follows: Hardware Small Nails Dry Erase Boards Propane Food (All Types) Coffee* Thrift Cups Bowls Towels Blankets Funnel Tent ...

A little while ago, reflecting on the vapid comparisons that were then being floated in Punditopia between the Tea Party protests of the last few years and the #Occupy protests currently going on, I said that: I'm beginning to hope - based on the small but admirably philosophically consistent group of libertarians I've met circling the fringes of #OSLC - that [the Tea Party] will join #OWS. We'll see, I suppose. That was on 10/22./11 . In my last update, I mentioned that Ron Paul supporters have apparently made an inroad at #OccupyTheFed SLC. As a follow-up to that last, I wanted to draw a clear distinction between the goals and motivations of #Occupy - which are not oriented toward any political party or distinct philosophy but are of the Left in their particular type of populism and desire to correct inequality - and the Tea Party / libertarian / Ron Paul Right. This line is most clear, perhaps, in the disparate attitudes of the Tea Party and #Occupy toward money...

Three weeks ago #OccupySLC kicked off its encampment in Pioneer Park. I had no idea at the time that the camp would still be carrying on - let alone thriving - two weeks in, and here we are at week three. The base camp, while slightly more tightly grouped and orderly than the ramshackle construction that rose up out of the park, has maintained roughly its same layout and location for the entirety of peoples' stay there so far. By now, the main nodes of Base Camp should be pretty apparent: there's the Circle-A Cafe, feeding the masses, with the First Aid tents nearby and the dish cleaning and sanitizing operation going out of the back. Most of the General Assemblies take place in a large adjacent clearing that seats a hundred people easily. The whole camp consists of about 60 - 70 "residential" tents (not counting the supply or Kitchen tents, &c.). Today at noon, Jesse Fruhwirth  hosted a media training for a small but attentive group of people (I coun...

Today was the first bitter day of the season. It was cold out this morning: the clouds didn't roll in until the temperature had already dropped in the clear air - tonight, the weather man tells me, will be "the first hard freeze." It's not exactly going to be the first hard night for #OccupySLC - nationally, #Occupy has been having some hard nights lately . Tonight, in fact, #OccupySLC will be holding a vigil starting at 6 PM in solidarity with #OccupyOakland. At #OSLC Base Camp, the clothing tent (which is now an organized, autonomous operation like the Circle-A Cafe or the Free School) is looking for donations of the following: "Big Women's and Men's Clothing" Sweat pants/shirts New men's and women's underwear (warm) Winter socks Gloves, hats, coats Blankets / sleeping bags Shoes / boots Winter items for dogs Tents and tarps Speaking of the Circle-A Cafe... The kitchen is now a fully staffed, fully functioni...

Terry Collins with the AP reports : Police in riot gear stood watch only a few yards away from a group of stalwart demonstrators in the aftermath of skirmishes in front of City Hall that resulted in five volleys of tear gas from police, in blasts that seemed to intensify with each round, over a roughly three-hour stretch of evening scuffles. Image - NY Times NPR's conversation with SF Chronicle writer Matthai Kuruvila   here  . Follow-up NPR blog about violence between protesters and police   here . USA Today has a write-up of Oakland and similar events in Atlanta   here  . Oakland apparently plans to regroup tonight, so we'll see how this develops. Two things are worth noting. First, I was wondering why the Mayor of an ostensibly fairly liberal enclave in California was calling in the goon squad to break skulls. It turns out that Jean Quan is already facing a recall petition due to her failure to "provide leadership on crime issues," filed b...

In the interests of balance, CBS News is reporting "what if.."s and "we support them but..."s on the part of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. Right-wing fishwrapper The Washington Times is, of course, repeating this on their blog  along with a tabloid's idiot assertion that "Occupy Wall Street is taking cops off of other crimes," so give old Mayor Quan about as much credibility as you decide she deserves. All caught up? Good. Now watch this (sorry about the yelling): According to the eyewitness who put up these (and other) videos from #OccupyOakland: Hundreds of police cordoned off 9 blocks in downtown Oakland surrounding Oscar Grant Plaza, pursued people on the streets after the raid, then raided the second Occupy Oakland camp at Snow Park.

Either stay tuned through the unbearable politico-reggae interlude or skip to about 3:10 or so: I guess Oakland's City Hall can apparently be added to the list of "non free speech zones." According to reports out of Oakland, the police there used tear gas, "nonlethal projectiles" (either rubber bullets or beanbags) and according to at least one observer, flash-bang grenades to clear the peaceful #Occupy base camp. I have heard from some conservatives that the #Occupy protests remind them in a scary way of the rise of fascism, or the failure of the Weimar Republic. I'll leave it up to you. Oakland before: Oakland after: Land of the free, baby, home of the brave!

The #Occupy movement is still going strong both nationally and internationally. The protests have now lasted much, much longer than I assumed they would, and weird wrinkles have begun to emerge in the usually sadly predictable fabric of protester-police relations. For example: in Albany, city police and New York State Troopers refused to comply with Governor Cuomo's request for mass arrests: In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany's mayor, under pressure from Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.  Since New York has proven itself the #Occupy innovator so far, I can only express my fondest hopes that this development spreads nationwide. Meanwhile, in a less heartening developmen t, #OccupyMaine in Portland was attacked by wingnuts with a chemical weapon : Portland police Sgt. Glen McGary sa...

If you've never donated money to WikiLeaks, now would be the perfect time - if you can do so without using Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or Western Union. According to reports this morning, all of the above companies have decided to boycott and/or place an embargo on WikiLeaks after they leaked a batch of diplomatic cables. Julian Assange, the flaxen-haired space elf who edits everyone's favorite secret information clearinghouse, says the blockade has destroyed 95% of their revenue. Quoth NPR : Saying that "an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade...has destroyed 95% of our revenue," WikiLeaks has suspended publishing operations and founder Julian Assange says it may have to shut down permanently by year's end. As I was reading the news about Assange and his current predicament, something bothered me. I kept flipping back and forth between Assange's remarks as reproduced at NPR's off-putting "Two Way" blog and as ...