OCCUPY WALL STREET

[SoNotHer]

List of Food Lion and other stores to be shuttered
By The Associated Press | Associated Press – Thu, Jan 12, 2012

Belgian supermarket chain Delhaize Group said Thursday it will close 113 Food Lion stores as it struggles with tight consumer spending and increased competition. It is also shuttering its Bloom brand, closing seven stores and converting 42 others to Food Lions. Six Bottom Dollar Food stores will be closed and 22 others turned into Food Lions. A distribution center in Tennessee also will close.

About 4,900 jobs will be lost.

— Florida: Food Lion stores in Alachua, Gainesville, Fernandina Beach, Fruit Cove, Jacksonville (12), Macclenny, Middleburg, Orange Park, Saint Augustine (3), New Smyrna Beach, Ormond Beach and Port Orange.

— Georgia: Food Lion stores in College Park, Conyers, Dallas, Douglasville, Fayetteville, Gainesville, Jefferson, Jonesboro, Lawrenceville, Marietta, Newnan (2), Evans, Martinez (2), Chatsworth, Fort Oglethorpe, Rossville, Trenton, Waycross, Macon (2), Warner Robins (2), Garden City, Rincon, Savannah (2) and Carrollton.

— Kentucky: Food Lion stores in Dry Ridge, Cynthiana, Danville, Morehead, Paris, Stanford and Radcliff.

— Maryland: A Bloom store in Walkersville.

— North Carolina: A Bottom Dollar store in Mooresville; Food Lion stores in Hendersonville, Weaverville and Cary.

— Pennsylvania: Food Lion stores in Shippensburg and Sinking Spring.

— South Carolina: Food Lion stores in Moncks Corner, Mount Pleasant (2), Fort Mill, Newberry, Winnsboro, Anderson, Greenville, Greer, Inman, Laurens, Spartanburg (2) and Hilton Head Island.

— Tennessee: Food Lion stores in Athens, Chattanooga (6), Cleveland, Hixson, Clinton, Crossville, Knoxville, Maryville, Morristown, Sevierville, Clarksville, Hendersonville, Lewisburg, Murfreesboro (2), Old Hickory, Smyrna, Sparta, Greeneville and Johnson City.

— Virginia: Bloom stores in Annandale, Ashburn, Fairfax, Herndon, Leesburg, Woodbridge; Bottom Dollar Food stores in Alexandria, Newport News (2), Portsmouth and Virginia Beach; Food Lion stores in Richmond (2), Appomattox, Lynchburg, Radford, Roanoke and Bristol.

— West Virginia: A Food Lion store in Elkins.


Here the announcement of the stores to be closed -

http://d1pmybhtyfsbgv.cloudfront.net...2-1-2948-0.pdf :

[Cin]

The Movement to Overturn Citizens United Takes Form
Wednesday 18 January 2012
by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

As the 2012 elections heat up, Occupiers and activists across the country are embracing the growing public outrage over attack ads, super PACs and limitless corporate campaign spending. Now, with the help of reform groups, a national movement to challenge the corporate influence on American democracy could be coming to a courthouse, city hall or ballot box near you.

The action begins this weekend. About 150 protests and occupations are planned across the country on Friday and Saturday to mark the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that unleashed a flood of corporate spending in recent elections.

The historic Citizens United case and subsequent lower court rulings opened the doors for corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums supporting or opposing political candidates, paving the way for nonprofit groups and so-called super PACs to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on influencing public debate.

On Friday, a national day of action dubbed Occupy the Courts will see 111 actions and occupations at courthouses from coast to coast, including the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Activists are also planning protests at corporate buildings on Saturday under the banner Occupy the Corporations.

The national days of protest are inspired by Occupy Wall Street (OWS), but spearheaded by a coalition of groups organizing a growing grassroots movement to amend the Constitution and overturn Citizens United.

Their local victories have already made headlines. City councils in Portland; New York City; Los Angeles;, Boulder, Colorado; and more than a dozen other cities have already passed resolutions opposing "corporate personhood" or calling on lawmakers to work toward overturning Citizens United. (Corporate personhood refers to corporations obtaining the same rights as individuals, such as free speech. Many say the Citizens United ruling has established corporate personhood, but click here for a new perspective from Truthout.)

Common Cause announced on Tuesday its own grassroots effort to place "voter instruction" ballot initiatives during the 2012 elections in all 50 states that would allow voters to ask their lawmakers to support a constitutional amendment.

Organizers from the amendment campaigns say they are hoping to feed off momentum the Occupy movement has already established on the ground.

"The protest momentum is part of this," said Robert Reich, former US labor secretary and Common Cause chair. "I've personally spoken at a number of occupy rallies, and what I hear over and over again is that we've got to take back democracy and money coming from the increasingly concentrated income at the top is overwhelming our institutions."

David Cobb, a spokesperson for Move to Amend, a coalition group organizing Occupy the Courts, said activists from local Occupies have been instrumental in organizing January 20 Occupy the Courts actions.

Occupiers are organizing their own actions as well. In San Francisco, OWS West has called for a mass occupation of the city's financial district on Friday to protest Citizens United, home foreclosures and corporate greed.

In New York, OWS suffered a setback last week when a permit to rally outside a US district court in Manhattan was denied. OWS appealed the decision, but has so far changed the location march and rally at Zuccotti Park, aka Liberty Plaza.

[SoNotHer]

A lot of groups and folks coming together to protest the SC decision to recognize corporations as citizens and money as speech -

[Cin]

http://www.truth-out.org/problem-cit...ood/1326497162

I thought this was a really interesting article. It talks about how the Supreme Court did not base it's decision regarding Citizens United on corporate personhood or the 14th amendment at all. Instead it went for a bizarre interpretation of the 1st amendment and free speech needing to be protected for those who have the right to listen. I guess to listen to campaign speeches and such. I guess that means its protecting me and my right to hear the crap these politicians have to say. Nobody seemed that interested in free speech when the angle is talking instead of listening as witnessed by the treatement of Occupy protestors. But I digress. The article also talks about a simpler way to overturn the Supreme Courts decisions surrounding Citizens United and earlier rulings regarding money in politics, than trying to get an amendment to the constitution. It's a long article but I found it worth the read.

[Cin]

Prosecutors aim new weapon at Occupy activists: lynching allegation

By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching.

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," where "riot" is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405(a) was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups.
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Whether the police allegation in this case will be pursued by by California’s courts is uncertain. But the felony charge — which carries a potential four-year prison sentence — is the kind of accusation that can change the landscape for would-be demonstrators.

"Felonies really heighten the stakes for the protesters," said Baher Azmy, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "I think in situations where there are mass demonstrations and a confrontation between protesters and police, one always has to be on the lookout for exaggerated interpretations of legal rules that attempt to punish or squelch the protesters."

Ballesteros, a teacher-turned-social-activist, was one of two people arrested during an "art walk" in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. He and other Occupy LA activists — maybe 200, he said — had joined the procession to bring their message about social injustice to the thousands of gallery-goers.

Adam Alders, a protester who was playing a drum was arrested after stepping off the curb into the street. Ballesteros said that in doing so, the drummer was joining hundreds of other people who could not fit on the crowded sidewalk.

Ballesteros said he was across the street when he saw the arrest — which he said looked excessively rough -- and it was “startling.” Under legal advice, Ballesteros is not providing additional detail, but apparently he objected — in some fashion — to the arrest. A video of the crowded scene posted on YouTube shows Ballesteros on the ground, being handcuffed.

The police report says officers called for backup when Ballesteros pulled Alders out into the crowd, which was "hostile."

A video of the event shows the crowd chanting "let him go!"

He was booked into jail on a felony charge, the Los Angeles Police department confirmed, and released on $50,000 bail early Tuesday morning.

Ballesteros is not the first protester to face this 1933 California law.

Occupy Oakland activist Tiffany Tran, 23, was arrested Dec. 30 and charged with "lynching." At an arraignment four days later, prosecutors opted not to file the charges, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported. They could change their decision until the one-year statute of limitations expires.

"Now I feel I can’t go out and express myself as I should be able to," Tran told the paper.

In the handful of protest cases in which lynching has been used as a charge in the past, it later has been dropped. However, in one case, a court concluded that “lynching” could include “a person who takes part in a riot leading to his escape from custody."

Many states have laws against lynching — largely drafted to prevent white supremacists and other vigilante groups from using violence against African Americans and white people who supported them. Hundreds of lynchings of this sort took place in the late 1800s through the mid-1900s.

Ballesteros' lawyer said use of this law was perhaps less appealing to the District Attorney than to the police.

Ballesteros is an activist outside the Occupy movement -- building homes through Habitat for Humanity during his spring breaks, aiding at a children's camp for the poorest kids in the Appalachians during the summer, and acting as mentor for disadvantaged kids in the Los Angeles area.

"Whether the District Attorney has the stomach to charge this model young man with a felony is questionable," saidd Mieke ter Poorten, an LA criminal defense attorney who is handling this case pro bono.

Ballesteros, who spoke to msnbc.com on Tuesday, said that he does not believe he will be convicted of lynching.

“They don’t have much,” he said of the case against him.

He also faces a misdemeanor charge for his arrest Nov. 30, when he was among more than 200 people who defied eviction from an encampment on the grounds of Los Angeles' City Hall. There was an arraignment for protesters arrested that day, but they were told no charges yet had been filed.

“They have a year to do so,” said Ballesteros. "Now they certainly will. It’s obvious. It’s all political.”

[Cin]

Lynching the Dream
Thursday 19 January 2012
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

This past Monday, this nation celebrated the memory of one of our greatest minds, one of our tallest souls, one of our lost children. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrates the memory of our American Gandhi, a man who dedicated his life - and, in Memphis, gave his life - to the idea that is America: all are created equal.

To be sure, the "Negro" was counted only as 3/5ths of a man in the document that first established the ridiculous experiment that became America, and women were counted not at all, but more than two hundred years have passed since that original ink was put to paper. Ours is a self-improving republic, thanks to the genius of those founding documents. A "Negro" now sits in the highest office of the land, and a woman (who lost the chance to sit in that exalted seat by only an eyelash or two) now commands the most important and influential position in the Federal government, save the one enjoyed by her immediate superior.

Ours is a nation of genius, and of assassins, in equal measure. We reached the moon, cracked the genome code, we feed millions, liberated Europe and Asia from horrific tyranny sixty years ago, and daily export the idea that one should be able to speak their mind without fear of the gulag or the work camp or the executioner's bullet...and yet we do this even as the souls of slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and ten times ten thousand Iraqis shriek their condemnation from the blood this nation has spilled in its pursuit of "greatness."

I have been preaching this gospel, in word and deed, for almost twenty years: America is an idea. You can take our cities, our roads, whatever is left of our manufacturing base, our crops, our armies, our weapons, you can take the land itself from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon...you can take it all, and the idea that is America will still remain, as robust and vital as the day it was first conceived. It is the idea that sustains me, the brilliant simplicity of actual equality, and it is the offenses to the idea that I have pledged my life against.

Some will argue that I and those who believe as I do are doomed to failure. Perhaps this is true; the forces arrayed against what I and others of like mind hold true and dear are stupendous, overwhelming, and well-placed in money and in media. Even the "Hope and Change" president of the present maintains and extends the elaborate shame of our past, apparently deaf to the howls of those of us who would have him, and us, do right at long last.

It is what it is, as someone once said. You look for a toehold, a place to grab on to, a front - no matter how meager - from which to wage your own siege, against all that has gone so catastrophically wrong with this old experiment, in trying to do right.

We define ourselves through comparison to that which we oppose. In this, we are seldom lacking in inspiration. Take, for example, this report about the newest way the Powers That Be have chosen to crush and prosecute the Occupy movement. It isn't enough for a prosecutor to charge a protester who has been beaten and Maced by police with assault. No, we're going here:

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge - lynching.

Whether the police allegation in this case will be pursued by by California's courts is uncertain. But the felony charge - which carries a potential four-year prison sentence - is the kind of accusation that can change the landscape for would-be demonstrators.

"Felonies really heighten the stakes for the protesters," said Baher Azmy, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "I think in situations where there are mass demonstrations and a confrontation between protesters and police, one always has to be on the lookout for exaggerated interpretations of legal rules that attempt to punish or squelch the protesters."

Lynching: "For many African Americans growing up in the South in the 19th and 20th centuries, the threat of lynching was commonplace. The popular image of an angry white mob stringing a black man up to a tree is only half the story. Lynching, an act of terror meant to spread fear among blacks, served the broad social purpose of maintaining white supremacy in the economic, social and political spheres."

Once upon a time, the (lily-white) power structure used lynching as a means of maintaining control. Now, in the shadow of the holiday celebrating Dr. King's life and work, they are deploying this accusation in order to punish and prosecute people who have exercised the right gifted by this idea, this country, this place of alleged freedom: the right to speak your piece, "to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The idea remains intact, even after so prolonged an assault from so determined a foe.

It is, as ever, worth fighting for. As Dr. King said, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

Dig in, people.

Dig in deep.

The Promised Land is far and wee, and all we have in the meantime is ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, each other, and the promise of an idea that - with our blood, sweat, and toil - may yet be fulfilled.

[SoNotHer]

Two Ladies Followed Obama To The Apollo Last Night And This Is What They Said



Please sign the petition calling for an investigation of Wall Street Bank Fraud

http://pol.moveon.org/bankfraud/?rc=homepage


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