Bedford, New Hampshire The Granite State had been worked to a fever pitch by Monday, as candidates made their final appeals before the long-anticipated primary. In the sleepy New Hampshire hills, the buildings overflowed. Crowds of reporters swallowed candidates and innocent bystanders alike. And the kooks and activists came out to play. Welcome to primary [...]
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street began with a simple idea: occupy Wall Street. By sitting, camping, sleeping at what many Americans still see as the symbolic scene of the crimes–both moral and legal–that led to the 2008 financial collapse, the message was clear. It was an act of civil disobedience that pointed the finger at the rich [...]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg left no question about his reasons for ordering a surprise overnight raid on Zuccotti Park to clear protesters after weeks of occupation. “The park was becoming a place where people came not to protest, but rather to break laws, and in some cases, to harm others,” Bloomberg said in a statement. In [...]
In the two years since he resigned from the government, under fire from conservatives for having once embraced “Marxist” ideology and other controversies, Van Jones has been seeking a way to recreate the grassroots energy of the Tea Party for the left. Since the Occupy Protests began, he has become one of their biggest cheerleaders, organizing a broad swath of liberal institutions, from labor unions to Planned Parenthood, to help support the cause and magnify the Occupy message.
The Republican National Committee seems to think the answer is yes. Here the tear gas in Oakland is shown to describe instability in Obama’s America, and the Occupy protesters are used to demonstrate dissatisfaction with Obama.
My TIME colleague Ishaan Tharoor has done the interwebbing proud by writing a blog post that tries to counterspin the growing political spin–most recently from President Obama–describing the liberal Occupy Wall Street movement as similar in kind to the conservative Tea Party movement. Provocative, no doubt, and just what the moment ordered. But since I [...]
