Milk Street Cafe, the restaurant whose business dried up in the face of the Occupy Wall Street barricades, is shutting down. . . .
Milk Street Cafe’s closure will result in the layoff of 70 workers. That’s on top of the 21 let go in October.
Rep. Issa asks Obama official why illegal
camping of Occupy DC was permitted
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Tuesday announced he wants answers on whether “political judgments played a role” in allowing Occupy D.C. protesters to remain camped in Northwest Washington.
Issa, chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter dated Monday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar requesting any communication between the Department of Interior and the White House regarding the Occupy D.C. protests. . . .
Occupy DC protesters, an outgrowth of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement that began in Manhattan, have been camping in McPherson Square, in Northwest Washington, for more than two months. The National Park Service (NPS), an agency of the DOI, prohibits camping in the square, but allows 24-hour protests. Issa is seeking answers on the apparent discrepancy.
“The protesters camping in McPherson Square appear to be in violation of the law and the NPS could have legally required them to stop and remove their tents,” Issa wrote in the letter. “The NPS has an obligation to the American people to explain the decisions that were made regarding the Occupy D.C. protesters in McPherson Square.”
Also Monday morning, some Occupy Portland protesters on the way to the port demonstration were involved in a crash in a stolen truck, police said.
The crash occurred on Marine Drive at the I-5 overpass.
Officers arrested Levi B. Feltkamp, 30, for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Police said the truck he was driving had been stolen from Forest Grove.
“Feltkamp and the occupants of the stolen truck all indicated they were on their way to the Occupy demonstration,” King said.
In more than two dozen cities across the nation Tuesday, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement took on the housing crisis by re-occupying foreclosed homes, disrupting bank auctions and blocking evictions.
Occupy Our Homes said it’s embarking on a “national day of action” to protest the mistreatment of homeowners by big banks, who they say made billions of dollars off of the housing bubble by offering predatory loans and indulging in practices that took advantage of consumers.
One of the groups identified in that story — “Neighborhoods Organizing for Change” — is a spin-off of ACORN, and investigative reporter Matthew Vadum notes that the Working Families Party, an ACORN political front group, was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement “from Day One.”
The tactic of “occupying” foreclosed homes was a high-profile tactic of ACORN in 2009, Quinton notes.
UPDATE: And in other “Occupy” news:
Anti-Wall Street activists
look to block West Coast ports
Anti-Wall Street protesters, hoping to briefly cripple a key supply chain of American commerce and re-energize their movement, plan to attempt to block major West Coast ports on Monday.
Question: What, exactly, is this intended to prove? Whom is supposed to be benefitted by this? Is this some kind of “mainstream” movement on behalf of the middle class — as our friends in the liberal media would have us believe — or is it a tiny fringe of Marxist radicals?
Keith Olbermann lives! The story picks up at 5:13 into the clip. #Occupy protesters (the ‘99%’) laid on the ground and covered themselves in a red carpet for the people leaving the Christmas party (the ‘1%’) to walk all over:
In attendance was retired Army Colonel Patrick Murray, who sent the following email:
Last night I had the honor of attending the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce Christmas party. Walking up, we were accosted by an angry, snarling mob of protesters, courtesy of labor unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and some of the “Occupy” rabble. All of them were screaming the now stale “Pay your fair share,” and “You walk on our rights, now walk on us” (daring us to step on protesters lying underneath a red carpet painted with “99 %”). As we waded through the rabble, I stopped to soak it all in, whereupon the protesters speculated about my heritage as well as offering some recommendations that I’m pretty sure are anatomically impossible.
I spent 24 years serving my country in the Army and defending the Constitution (or as Jim Moran calls it: “meaningless”). That includes our 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble. But what I witnessed last night was chilling, because these aren’t the first such protests I’ve witnessed, albeit in faraway lands.
While serving in places like Belgrade, Moscow and Minsk, places that had strong Socialist movements and totalitarian regimes, I encountered the exact same thing, often in front of the American Embassy where I worked. The slogans and the signs were in different languages, but the methodology was the same (in the aforementioned locations, the AstroTurf mobs arrived in busses; SEIU just happens to have mountains of cash from taxpayers and forced union dues that they can fly their mobs in). But the Socialist, anti-American undercurrents were eerily similar, such that standing there last night I suddenly got an odd sense of deja vu. It was like I was back in a totalitarian state, except that I wasn’t. Instead, I was standing on H Street NW, right in the heart of our Nation’s Capital.
The more I think about it, the more disturbing it becomes. First, consider the inanity of supposedly jobless people out protesting against the Chamber of Commerce, a stellar organization that exists to create jobs and support small business. It’s also troubling that the protests here mirror those I’ve seen in remote places where there is no culture of individual freedoms or the concept of private ownership, much less representative government. But most troubling is that the goals of the anti-American mobs are shared by the leaders of the current Democrat Party. Massive income redistribution and ever-higher taxes to feed an enormous federal nanny state from which all blessings flow is the utopia of Jim Moran, Tim Kaine, Nancy Pelosi our current president. All wrapped up in the innocuous, poll-tested jingle of “pay your fair share.”
Rowan Williams says Jesus would have joined protesters from the anti-corporate Occupy movement who have been camped outside London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral for more than seven weeks.
In a British magazine, the leader of the world’s 78 million Anglicans worldwide insisted that Jesus would be “there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides.”
If you read the Gospels, Jesus’s encounters with people generally took one of two tracks: if they were people in authority, or ought to know better, he lowered the rhetorical boom. The rest of the people were dealt with far less harshly.
Since Jesus, it’s become something of a sport to attempt to rebrand the carpenter whose job was to bring salvation to fit whatever cause is at hand. What a demotion.
Somebody needs to politely suggest to Rowan Williams that he may be as far off base today as the Pharisees were in the day of Jesus. The notion that the secular effort of the #Occupy movement has even the slightest overlap with Jesus’s mission is daft, as un-Biblical as an ‘Archbishop’, and arguably heretical. Jesus, for example ensured the taxes were paid.
The archbishop said that when Jesus said “give Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” he was asking “what’s the exact point at which involvement in the empire of capitalist economy involves you fatally.”
Really, you Archie-comic Bishop? What was the context of Jesus’s famous statement?
And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words. (Mark 12:13)
The authorities were begging the question: “Have you given up cheating on your taxes?” And Jesus, masterfully, cut the inquisitors to the bone. Furthermore, what do you mean by “involvement in the empire of capitalist economy”? Judea was a Roman province at the time of Jesus’s physical life. Are you making an economic assertion about how the economy worked then? Are we still clinging to the fiction that the British or American economies are purely capitalist now?
Lord have mercy on you sir, and may the Holy Spirit give you an unction to study the Word with some real, prayerful, un-polluted understanding. Because right now, it looks like the rebukes that Jesus laid on the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees of his day may apply to you, as well.
Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa announced on Friday that City Hall Park would be closed at 12:01 a.m. on Monday. Those who refuse to leave may face arrest.
“The movement has awakened the country’s conscience. It has given voice to those who have not been heard,” the mayor said. “I am proud of the fact that this has been a peaceful, nonviolent protest. It has been peaceful because we decided to do things differently in Los Angeles, not stare each other down across barricades and barbed wire.”
The impending end of Occupy L.A.’s stay outside City Hall — one of the last of the movement’s major encampments — may signal the end of a phase of the protests that has been characterized by large camps in parks and public spaces.
“I spent the last three weeks building this library into a place where people could come together, where they can just share ideas, where they can meet each other, and where they can just be in peace together. And now it’s all being torn apart for no good reason. We’re not hurting anybody here. We’re not hurting any one. We just want to be here and meet each other and learn together. We just want to try and build a new world.”
Crying Canadian hippies! The last time I enjoyed sorrow this much was when ‘Bama made Tim Tebow cry in the 2009 SEC Championship Game.
“I’m down here from Occupy Salt Lake. We came here to show solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. It’s really great to be here and to give thanks to the people who are taking time out of their lives to rebuild a new community, a new economy and a new government.”
—Breana Reichert
Breana Reichert shows up at the 29-second mark of this Associated Press “raw video” of Thanksgiving Day in Zuccotti Park:
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Wildlife Board shot down a controversial proposal Tuesday that would have changed the regulations for trapping coyotes. The decision comes after critics roundly condemned it as unethical, inhumane and impractical. . . .
“We feel that it’s unethical, it’s cruel, it’s inhumane,” said Breana Reichert. She spoke to the board on behalf of a campus group called UVU Animal Allies.
In January, then, Reichert was protesting on behalf of coyotes. And in February:
When Co-President of the Animal Allies Club Breana Reichert wants to eat at the cafeteria or other food services on campus, her choices are limited.
As a vegan, she chooses not to consume any products or by-products that come from animals. . . .
“Animal rights has many ties to feminism, workers rights, environmental awareness and should be right at the top of the list,” said Reichert.
SALT LAKE CITY — Two Utah Valley University students spent the night in jail for a demonstration in support of the federal DREAM Act.
Federal Protective Services arrested Diego Ibanez and Agustin Diaz Tuesday night because they refused to leave Sen. Orrin Hatch’s office at the Federal Building in Salt Lake City. . . . Two other students, Breana Reichert and Jessica Zelaya, waited for a similar response from Sen. Bennett, though they left the building without being detained.
Reichert’s biography serves to demonstrate how Occupy Wall Street — while supposedly targeted on misconduct by financial institutions, income inequality and other economic “social justice” issues — draws its support from a broad spectrum of left-wing activism.
Well, we were protesting together, and the riot cops came at us, and we linked arms and sat down peacefully to protest their presence on our campus. And at one point, they were -— we had encircled them, and they were trying to leave, and they were trying to clear a path. And so, we sat down, linked arms, and said that if they wanted to clear the path, they would have to go through us. But we were on the ground, you know, heads down. And all I could see was people telling me to cover my head, protect myself, and put my head down. And the next thing I know, I was pepper-sprayed.
Case dismissed.
And no, it is not acceptable to scapegoat a couple of riot police or a university Chancellor just to quell the emotional demands of mobs, or to sate a public outcry manipulated by a hostile press. . . .
The left is looking for its Kent State moment. Hell, they’ve been longing for it.
It is vitally important to understand that the Occupiers — as well as the journalists who for the past two months have heaped fawning coverage on their movement — have all been indoctrinated in the civil-disobedience mythology of the Sixties.
Once again to borrow the old Rodgers and Hammerstein lyric, “you have to be carefully taught” to believe this stuff, i.e., in any conflict between protesters and police, the protesters are always virtuous heroes and the police are always villainously wrong.
