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Asked why he signed a petition to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, George Shiver, 55, emptied a bag of prescription medications onto the coffee table in his untidy Eau Claire apartment. “These are the drugs I take to stay alive every month,” says the single father of four, who is on disability, food stamps and [...]
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 [...]
When the bean counters finished tabulating the results from the 1,774 precincts that decide the Iowa caucuses, eight votes separated the victor, Mitt Romney (30,015) from the runner-up, Rick Santorum (30,007). Marvel at that for a moment. Eight votes out of more than 100,000. That is democracy. That’s Iowa. The Corn Bowl. Civic sport at [...]
Civil disobedience is easy to embrace from a distance. Few Americans condemned the thousands who gathered peacefully in violation of the law across the Arab world this spring. But when it starts happening on your doorstep, clogging up your streets or bringing drum circles to your place of work, it’s another matter altogether. And so [...]
The running critique of the Occupy Wall Street protests is that they have too many bongo drums and not enough message coherence. But that hasn’t stopped Washington’s elite–Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and President Barack Obama–from all hearing the same, singular message loud and clear.
People around the country are rallying around a new ill-defined movement, which has for now taken its name from its first act of civil disobedience: Occupy Wall Street. For now, it looks marginal, rag-tag, ill-defined and without focus. But keep an eye on it. To paraphrase Buffalo Springfield, something may be happening here.
