Occupy Wall Street Librarians Strike Back

Melissa Gira Grant, Truthout: "Thursday, members of Occupy Wall Street ... filed a federal lawsuit against the city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, seeking to hold them accountable for violations of their constitutional rights, as well as subsequent smaller raids that targeted the People's Library. In the course of the suit, the city may have to admit who called the shots during the eviction on November 15, 2011."
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Occupy Wall Street: Surviving the Winter

Fault Lines follows some of Occupy's key organisers as the movement fights to stay relevant over the winter months.

When Occupy Wall Street faced violent police crackdowns around the country, most people thought it had come to an end.
But the protesters had no intention of abandoning a movement that had already brought out thousands of Americans to demand attention to the country’s economic inequalities. Hundreds of protests and actions have continued around the country.
"The economic, political and social conditions continue to deteriorate and as a human being - it doesn't matter where you're from or what your history is - you'll always revolt against that," says Amin Husain, an Occupy organiser.

Fault Lines looks at how Occupy Wall Street continued to build itself through the winter months by following key organisers through planning meetings, days of action and assemblies - and how the movement must battle political co-optation in a US election year.

You Cannot Evict an Idea

Occupy Wall Street: 6 Months Later, What Has Occupy Protest Movement Achieved? 

 

OWS needs a winter ruckus

Michael Moore | Let's Double Our Efforts to Raise a Ruckus
Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com: "On December 30th, in 1936 - 75 years ago - hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.... I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail."
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A Warning to Obama

by Ariel Dorfman, Tomdispatch
It’s as if the spreading movement, made up of kids who might once have turned out for presidential candidate Obama, had left him and his administration in the dust.  Like big labor, the left, and the media, the administration that loved its bankers to death (and got little enough in return for that embrace) is now playing catch-up with a ragtag bunch of protesters it wouldn’t have thought twice about if they hadn't somehow caught the zeitgeist of this moment. (Don’t forget that the Obama administration was similarly left scrambling and desperately behind events when it came to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo last January.)

The best Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner could say a few days ago, when asked about his sympathies for the Occupy Wall Street movement, was: "I feel a lot of sympathy for what you might describe as a general sense among Americans that we've lost a sense of possibility."  Really?  White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley didn’t know if the movement was exactly “helpful” for the White House agenda.  Truly?  And White House press spokesman Jay Carney commented blandly, “I would simply say that, to the extent that people are frustrated with the economic situation, we understand.” Do you?