Salt City Sinner

I mentioned that #OccupySLC will be participating in a day of protest and solidarity with #OccupyOakland tomorrow, 12/12/11 (meet at Gallivan Plaza at 8 AM MST, citizens!). I realized shortly afterwards that I had neglected to mention what Salt Lake City is acting in solidarity with.  To rectify that mistake: Oakland's Occupy movement, which has been one of the hardest hit and most brutalized by police, plans to respond via a general strike / port blockade. #OccupySLC will be responding with protests of Walmart (more information on that   here  and   here  ). This has led to an interesting dispute between #Occupy and Big Labor, in this case represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Salon has a decent write-up of the dispute's outlines: On Dec. 12, general assemblies (the decentralized governing bodies of [Occupy Wall Street]) in Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Santa Barbara, Calif., Portland, Ore., Sea...

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...

It's always nice to be recognized for good work (instead of, say, the worst air quality in the United States ). It looks like Salt Lake has earned some of that recognition. From the Trib : The Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young released an annual report on Monday looking at how governments globally plan and build key infrastructure projects, and repeated warning of recent years that America is falling behind as budgets are cut in tough times. But it added, “Despite fiscal constraints, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Salt Lake City have successfully moved projects forward” — and suggests that other areas look at how they did it. And how did we do it? In Utah, the study praised how cities, counties and planning agencies in the Salt Lake metro area backed the Utah Transit Authority’s expansion of its TRAX light rail and its FrontRunner commuter rail — including supporting voter approval of a sales tax increase to help fund them, and cutting bus service to afford expansion of ...