If you want to keep up to date on the Occupy movement, you’ve come to the right place. This is Breitbart.com’s running chronicle of Occupy’s chaos, political machinations and internal power struggles as we head towards the Occupy movement’s planned Spring rebirth.

The Occupy movement is the Obama administration’s shadow campaign; community organized shock troops helping to spread the President’s strategic 2012 campaign message that we need to stop income inequality. With Big Labor calling the tactical shots, Occupy is President Obama’s direct action to bring real radicalism into the mainstream American politics, while another faction of Occupy organizers struggles to extract the movement from the grips of the Democrat Party establishment.

The crowds may have dwindled with the cold weather, but there’s still a tremendous amount of Occupy activity preparing for an “American Spring.”  We’ll be keeping this page updated with links to all of our Occupy coverage.  Catch it all right here, in one place.

(more…)

“When you look at government policies, there’s a massive transfer of wealth from the young and relatively poor members of society toward the old and relatively members of society,” says Veronique de Rugy, a Reason magazine columnist and economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

In 1970, de Rugy notes, transfers from the young to the old took up about 20 percent of the federal budget. In a few years, that figure will break the 50 percent barrier as the population ages and Social Security and Medicare ramp up. Those programs are paid for by payroll taxes that suck up around 15 percent of every dollar most workers will ever make.

Yet the #Occupy movement spends most of its energy railing against “the 1 Percent” richest Americans, whose wealth is not gained at the expense of the “99 Percent.” Rather, it comes from providing goods and services that people want to consume.

(more…)

While blowing all of the inappropriate anti-American, anti-capitalist dog whistles to incite the Left into reflexive action, Dave Zirin at The Nation casts the Super Bowl as basically everything the left hates about America.

Cue angry Union worker: “Upsetting the Super Bowl— I couldn’t care less. This is about my life and my family.” —Lou Feldman, IBEW local 668.” But that’s just the opening salvo. A good Leftist can never go wrong banging on the military, let alone capitalism.

The sheer volume of the Super Bowl is overpowering: the corporate branding, the sexist beer ads, the miasma of Madison Avenue–produced militarism, the two-hour pre-game show. But people in the labor and Occupy movements in Indiana are attempting to drown out the din with the help of a human microphone right at the front gates of Lucas Oil Stadium.

Lest you think the left is merely anti-football, the stakes are somewhat greater than that for them and always political.

The Republican-led state legislature aims to pass a law this week that would make Indiana a “right-to-work” state.

(more…)

Occupy Wall Street was ‘absolutely’ racist and hypocritical, according to a black occupier and his girlfriend who first liked protesting at Zuccotti Park but now have moved to Occupy Newark. My interview with occupier Michael Morgan raised the same issues that came up in every discussion I had with black members of the Occupy Wall Street protest, who all felt that the movement was racist. These accusations are coming from men and women who support much of the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street but have seen the reality with their own eyes. So far, the cowardly elitist leaders of Occupy Wall Street have done nothing to answer these charges from within their own movement that they are racist against people of color.

Here’s my interview with Mr. Morgan:

Mr. Morgan was clearly bothered by the segregation at Zuccotti Park and that there was an area of Occupy known as ‘the ghetto.’ This segregation was brilliantly  exposed in one of the best pieces on mainstream media reporting on #Occupy from The Daily Show, which also shows the rift between the smug, privileged liberal elites who talk about the 99% but clearly wouldn’t want to be caught dead with them.

(more…)

Activists from Occupy Oakland attacked police on Saturday during attempts to take over civic property, injuring three police officers.

The Associated Press reports:

Police were in the process of arresting about 100 Occupy protesters who failed to disperse Saturday night, hours after officers used tear gas on a rowdy group of demonstrators who threw rocks and flares at them and tore down fences.

Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said the arrests came after protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday. Some protesters entered a YMCA building.

Meanwhile, about 100 police officers surrounded City Hall while others swept the inside of the building to see if any protesters broke in…. (more…)

You may think the Occupy Wall Street movement is fading away. You may think that colder weather and tougher local authorities will see “Occupy” crumble into nothingness. You may think it was all much ado about nothing.

Well you may possibly be right, but the communist forces who have increasingly infiltrated the movement have a very different view.

To them “Occupy” signifies  is the beginning of the end of capitalism. “Occupy” is a sign  to Leninists the world over that we are entering revolutionary times, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The following excerpts are from opening remarks by Larry Holmes, First Secretary of the pro Cuba/North Korea Workers World Party, to the WWP national leadership meeting Dec. 17 in New York City.

We are in the opening stages of a wholly new epoch.

This epoch in all likelihood will be protracted and long. It will be uneven, it will be explosive, it will be fraught with dangers — all of it necessary to that which we have been waiting so long for: the awakening of our global proletariat, and especially the awakening of that section of the proletariat whose development we are responsible for — the working class of the U.S.

The epoch I am referring to is the beginning of the end of capitalism. The epoch will end with the destruction of capitalism and the expropriation of the capitalist class…

To Holmes, capitalism has come to end of the road. It is the responsibility of Marxist-Leninists to hasten an inevitable process through organization and international solidarity.

(more…)

An infant’s cries rang through the Occupy DC encampment in McPherson Square Wednesday morning, and when a group went to investigate they found only a baby girl alone in a tent, wearing a onesie and mittens.

Soon after, authorities said, a man had been arrested and the girl — who was unharmed — was in the city’s care.

The campers notified U.S. Park Police officers and then cared for the girl until help arrived, according to Kelly Canavan, 36, a retired Prince George’s County school teacher who has been living at the camp.

(more…)

Even though the #Occupy movement has been kicked out of parks across the nation, apparently the sexual assaults continue. An online petition and other discussions reveal accusations of people within the #Occupy movement allegedly ignoring and abusing rape victims and contains shocking details about how assailants continue to be let back into Occupy, a trend that Brandon Darby and I discovered during an interview at Zuccotti Park in early November.

The online petition posted at iPetitions.com was posted by Strong Women Rule, the group formed by Nan Terrie. Big Government recently revealed that Ma. Terrie has been attacked by other Occupy leaders as a “disruptor” for trying to expose assault, theft and alleged financial malfeasance at Occupy Wall Street. Apparently, Ms. Terrie is disrupting the Occupy illusion again.

Here’s the text of the online petition: (more…)

The enormous cost to American cities of the Occupy Wall Street “occupations” is now starting to become clear. As of the end of the first two months of the nationwide occupy events, the movement that claims to represent 99% of us cost state taxpayers at least $13 million in police overtime and other municipal services, according to a survey by The Associated Press. By all accounts, that number will continue to rise.

In October the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a joint resolution to officially “support” the Occupy L.A. demonstration and “demand accountability and results from the banks we invest taxpayer dollars in.” By December, taxpayers learned they will be “investing” in something else: Occupy LA cost Los Angeles taxpayers, many of them the 99 percenters, at least $2.3 million. LA Mayor Villaraigosa says he will deal with the stunning costs, not by suing those responsible for the damages but by implementing budget cuts that will of course hurt the 99 percenters.

Cities such as Oakland, which spent $2.5 million in the aftermath of occupiers vandalizing public property, shutting down a critical port, trespassing, and committing countless other street crimes, have paid a dear price because of their “reactive approach” to the occupation.

The national cookie cutter approach to OWS was to be as politically correct as possible. City leaders collectively engaged in a hand-wringing mantra of “It’s their right of free speech… we must not interfere!” Add the fact that with “Big Banking” as the OWS target, city leaders had nothing to lose by throwing their support behind the benevolent freedom fighters. Trouble is, they actually had a lot to lose. (more…)

From the New York Post:

Does getting pepper-sprayed count as extra credit?

Columbia University is offering a new course on Occupy Wall Street next semester — sending upperclassmen and grad students into the field for full course credit.

(more…)

I am pleased to announce the winner of the First Annual Breitbart “Ambiguous Entity of the Year” award.

Our choice was inspired by the most under-reported story of the year: the dark side of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which the media attempted to hide.

From its origins, the Occupy movement has been riddled by rapes, sexual assaults, and countless other serious crimes–many of which were not reported to police because Occupy organizers understood that public police reports and media dispatches about crimes would hurt the movement’s image.

And, as one Occupier noted, “This is a battle over images, not just over the park.”

Had the Tea Party been ravaged by rapes, rampant drug use, vandalism, or assaults, those crimes would not only have been over-reported, they would have stopped the Tea Party in its tracks.

The mainstream media did its best to invent Tea Party misdeeds–imaginary “N-words” and all–where none existed. Prominent celebrities, athletes—even conservative ones, who support the Tea Party’s aims—have kept a low profile in the Tea Party for fear of being judged by the mainstream media’s double standard.

Yet the media-savvy, media-embraced Occupy movement used shout-outs from President Obama, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, rap impresario Russell Simmons, Alec Baldwin, Kanye West, Susan Sarandon, Roseanne Barr, Sean Lennon, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Tim Robbins, and Anne Hathaway to hide what was really going on at the makeshift encampments. (more…)

Spurred on by the need to court a waning youth vote, the Obama Administration addressed a concern that has been on many students’ and recent graduates’ minds: The cost of education in America. Calling college presidents from across the country into the Oval Office, President Obama chastised university leaders for their high prices and lack of leadership in the area of cost control and admonished them to rethink the “cost equation” that accompanies higher education.

The take-away message from President Obama’s private meeting with higher-education leaders on Monday was threefold: There needs to be a new sense of urgency on college affordability, there won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution as policies will have to affect all sectors of higher education, and the country needs innovations and cost-management from colleges and leadership from state legislatures.

That’s according to Thomas J. Snyder, President of Ivy Tech Community College, who participated in the meeting. President Obama and Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, are now in what Mr. Snyder described as listening mode, “but I suspect some pretty substantial proposals will evolve in the next few months,” he said.

Even Education Secretary Arne Duncan got in on the action, lecturing university leadership on the difficulties faced by recent graduates and called on colleges to “clamp down” on education costs. Soros-funded Campus Progress heralded these actions as a “step in the right direction” and praised Obama for his work helping students afford higher education. Obama patted himself on the back for his efforts, saying that his administration would “help more Americans attain a higher education at an affordable price.”

(more…)

McIntyre: permission to occupy the bench! (Photo credit: AP)

Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Frances McIntyre, who was prematurely panned for granting Occupy Boston a temporary reprieve (and for being a Mitt Romney appointee), delivered an elegant decision against the protestors today:

Plaintiffs claim that their occupation of the site and the community they have established thereon are protected by the First Amendment. They seek a preliminary injunction against their removal by the defendants.

But the injunction is denied because, while Occupy Boston protesters may be exercising their expressive rights during the protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to seize and hold the land on which they sit…[T]his court seriously doubts that the First Amendment permits the plaintiffs to seize and hold a public forum to the exclusion of others. (1, 15)

Judge McIntyre noted that “the setting up of tents, sleeping, and governance” on a public square is “expressive conduct,” albeit subject to local regulations that have a merely “incidental” impact on free speech, and which are consistent with established time, place, and manner restrictions on the First Amendment. However, the fact that protesters sought to “Occupy” that public square crossed the line from speech into land seizure.

(Time to rename that movement, perhaps?) (more…)

When asked about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in October, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren praised it to the hilt. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she told the Daily Beast. Yet when pressed in November on the OWS adherents’ increasingly violent tactics, she told a Boston TV interviewer: “Everybody has to follow the law. There’s no exception on that.”

But Warren’s apparent disavowal of the tactics of OWS and like-minded community organizers may not be shared by Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Warren designed. Cordray has long supported ESOP, formerly known as the East Side Organizing Project, an Ohio housing advocacy group that has distinguished itself by storming into banks and launching plastic “shark attacks” on the lawns of private homes. ESOP’s leaders brag about what they call their “organized hits” on banks and other targets, which have included the home of the late Congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp.

As Ohio treasurer and attorney general, Cordray lobbied for state and federal funding for ESOP and publicly praised funders of the group as “the real heroes.” And in a highly unusual move for a nominee awaiting confirmation, Cordray returned to Ohio in October to be the keynote speaker at the group’s gala dinner.

Since his nomination in July to head the bureau created by the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law, Republicans have held fast against confirmation. But largely, they haven’t made Cordray’s state record an issue. They have focused instead on structural defects in the agency’s design, such as the massive new powers the bureau will have to ban financial products it deems “abusive” and its lack of accountability to Congress.

These criticisms are valid, but they may not be enough to hold Senate Republicans together without criticism of the nominee’s merits. Just before Thanksgiving, Scott Brown (R-Mass.), facing a tough reelection challenge from Warren, became the first GOPer to commit to voting for Cordray. The Democrat-controlled Senate plans to hold a vote on his confirmation this week, possibly as early as Tuesday. Human Events‘ Neil McCabe reports that in addition to Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, other GOP targets for Cordray supporters include Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Tennessee’s Bob Corker, and Cordray’s home state Senator Rob Portman of Ohio (though Portman seemed to reaffirm his opposition in a statement to Human Events last week).

But Cordray’s support of ESOP needs further scrutiny, particularly since as head of the bureau, he will have the power to help funnel federal support to ESOP and like-minded community organizers with virtually no oversight by Congress. And a report by Bloomberg News suggests that Cordray specifically blessed ESOP’s “organized hits” on banks and homes.

(more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Benjamin Johnson and Logan Churchwell:

Now that the holidays and winter weather are upon us, it will be a critical time for the Occupy Movement. Will they continue to slum in public (and private) parks illegally, or do they go back to their parent’s house? But more important, will unions of all kinds dedicate work days and member dues to pick up the slack? Accuracy in Media has found lately that the AFL-CIO, CWA, SEIU and others are more than willing to co-opt the movement.

Accuracy in Media has documented and captured additional footage of unions looking to take advantage of the movement, but this is the most blatant collusion to date. The combined efforts of labor, churches and academia have reminded us all what an AstroTurf movement looks like; despite the conventional media narrative.

(more…)

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Hundreds of Occupy Los Angeles protesters showed no sign they planned to move Sunday ahead of a city-imposed midnight deadline to abandon their encampment, saying they would instead hold an “eviction block party.”

Although city officials have told demonstrators they must leave the weeks-old protest site and take their nearly 500 tents with them by 12:01 a.m. Monday, just a handful were seen packing up Sunday.

Instead, some passed out fliers containing the city seal and the words: “By order of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, this notice terminates your tenancy and requires you to attend the Occupy L.A. Eviction Block Party,” which the fliers’ said was scheduled for 12:01 a.m.

“The best way to keep a non-violent movement non-violent is to throw a party, and keep it festive and atmospheric,” said Brian Masterson as he helped a friend break down her tent. “And I’m going to be doing as much as I can to stop violence.”

He said he had turned his own tent into a “non-violent booby trap” by filling it with sandbags to make it tough to tear down.

“We can’t beat the LAPD, but we can make it difficult for them to do their job, and have fun while we’re doing it,” Masterson said. (more…)

A friend of mine was recently opining on Facebook, in the midst of the Occupy Albany movement announcing plans for a Black Friday flash mob scene at the local mall – What are the Occupiers trying to get done? It is a question many people have been asking since the movement began.

Democrats, particularly Nancy Pelosi, would have people believe that this is simply a wonderful grassroots citizen movement, people exercising their freedom of speech, holding banks and corporations accountable, and spreading peaceful socialist messages of a perceived attainable utopian economic society. It is not.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement amounts to nothing more than making excuses. Excuses that legitimize a platform of laziness and entitlements, excuses to act in a lawless manner, and excuses for snubbing basic principles of civil discourse.

After pouring through reports coming out of the Occupy movements in D.C., Portland, Boston, Oakland, and on, and on, what the protesters most closely resemble becomes quite clear. Seven basic attributes define the movement in its entirety.

Wrath

The wrath of the protesters seems to be aimed mostly at big banks and corporations, though some have certainly expressed anger for other reasons. The rage though, has simply grown out of control. Witness…

• Police officers being slashed with sharp objects, and having chemical irritants thrown in their eyes.
• A clean-up of Zuccotti Park which yielded “knives and other potential instruments of violence in flower beds throughout the public space.”
• A 78-year-old woman suffering a bloody nose, cuts and large bruises after she was knocked down some stairs at a protest in D.C.
• A protestor throwing a fit of rage because employees at a McDonalds refused to serve him free food.
• Flags burned, ATMs overturned, and occupiers hit by cars in the street at a gathering in Oakland.

Worse, there has certainly been a tangible element of anti-Semitism at the protests.

(more…)

For very good and valid reasons, Americans understand the extraordinary importance of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right peacefully to assemble for redress of grievances.  That, of course, is the rationale for the Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”) movement by which thousands of protestors are encamping in various public places around the country.

Our courts recognize few exceptions for the placing of limits on this exercise of free speech and in fact have themselves studied the issue in cases unrelated to OWS.  Courts recently have been debating whether limits on speech enacted by legislative bodies are constitutional.  As an example, a law prohibiting candidates for public office from lying about their opponents’ voting records during campaigns is drawing judicial scrutiny as an unconstitutional prohibition on protected free speech.  This matter is a serious one and whether we agree or not with OWS protestors (or tea party assemblies) we need to treat the subject based on constitutional principles rather than our own political predilections.  So why have the authorities suddenly stirred themselves to action to clean out OWS sites?

For one thing authorities have suddenly recognized some very important public principles:

First, public facilities are being taken over for the benefit of a few people as part of their attempt to advance solely their cause.  Parkland in central cities is very scarce and has been misused by groups who pitch tents from end to end in these parks and prevent (and in some instances intimidate) ordinary citizens from using public land.  Often these tent cities are abandoned during the day while the occupiers leave and go about their regular lives (going to work, going home, attending entertainment venues, etc.)

Recently, there has been a major spike in violence including shootings.  In Oakland protestors succeeded in shutting down the ports, which are a major, job producer in that city.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle “OWS protestors gathered up for their general assembly meeting and withdrew a resolution calling for future demonstrations to remain peaceful.  A faction of the protest group has advocated violence as a ‘diversity in tactics’ approach to demonstrating.”  Deaths have occurred in other cities as well, including Burlington, Vermont.   Secondly, there is an important public health issue that has arisen.  Protestors have been overwhelming the sanitary facilities at nearby businesses, cleaning and relieving themselves at bathrooms not built for such volume.  Finally, city authorities who have appeared to be looking the other way see that they have to take action.

(more…)

I love Thanksgiving.  It is uniquely American and uniquely right.  We celebrate God and Country and enjoy family time absent the stress and distraction of the more commercialized holidays.  There is no need to deconstruct “Jesus Clause” or explain to our children that our Lord and Savior rising from the grave has nothing to do with eggs and bunnies.  Who came up with that bunny laying egg thing anyway?

Recently, I visited with a man from Mexico who is in the U.S. legally, on a work assignment for a large corporation.  He was telling me how much he was looking forward to his first American Thanksgiving.  He will celebrate with friends either at their home or the others’.  I asked about the menu.  “Roast turkey with all of the trimmings” he quickly replied with a contagious enthusiasm.  This, from a man whose favorite staple is tamales.  He has never tasted a real roasted turkey, the American way.  I was going to ask about deep frying it…next year, I thought.

His simple menu selection and his use of the word “trimmings” flooded my mind instantly with thoughts about that unique dish, roasted Turkey.  We have celebrated Thanksgiving and that fine tryptophane laden meat at different times, with friends from Germany and friends from Russia.  It is always great to talk about the other traditions that are uniquely American, and more than just food.

I remember water skiing with friends from Europe on the amazing Lake of the Ozarks.  We rented a boat, filled a cooler with all kinds of libations, and enjoyed the heck out of a sunny July day.  As we sat quietly taking a break from the action and taking note of all the beautiful lakefront homes, they began lamenting how this would never be allowed in Europe.

In Europe, if you tried to put a motorized boat on a lake, the environmentalists would decry the degredation to the environment and pass laws to stop you.  If you tried to build a house on a lake, the communists would insist that the land belonged to all of the people and no one privately.  They went on, but the point should be clear.  In America, we are defined by putting individual rights first, starting with the Pilgrim’s quest for a place in which religious worship was every man’s exclusive domain.  These rights extend far beyond that to include the individual’s right to own land and be secure in that land and enjoy it for his or her own use.  Our uniquely American Government is designed on “negative rights”, or the right to be free FROM government, as opposed to the positive rights the socialists pursuit as to be given BY government.

(more…)

From the New York Post:

Meanwhile, Dutro, 35, one of only a handful of OWS leaders in charge of the movement’s $500,000 in donations, checked in on Wednesday, the night after police emptied Zuccotti Park.

While hundreds of his rebel brethren scrambled to find shelter in church basements, Dutro chose the five-star, 58-story hotel, with its lush rooms and 350-count Egyptian cotton sheets. He lives only a short taxi ride away in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

“I knew everything was going to be a clusterf–k in the morning,” he told The Post, alluding to Occupy’s own disruption plans. “How would I get over the bridge when they were shutting it down?”

(more…)