Occupy Wall Street Takes On Black Friday Amid Skepticism

With Black Friday heralding the start of the shopping season, a bevy of groups identified with the Occupy Wall Street movement are asking consumers to reconsider their spending habits.

But unlike other high-profile Occupy efforts of late -- such as last week's march across the Brooklyn Bridge, in which thousands of activists participated, it's unclear whether the pushback against Black Friday shopping will serve as a show of strength for the movement.

"I don't think that they're going to gain any traction out of this one," said Stephen Hoch, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. "If I was them, I wouldn't be investing a whole lot of energy in using this as a poster child for what's wrong with our country."

Black Friday, otherwise known as the day after Thanksgiving, serves as the unofficial start of the November-December holiday shopping corridor, one of the busiest times of year for retailers. About 152 million people are expected to shop this Friday, in what has become an annual tradition of shoppers mobbing stores in the hopes of getting limited-time deals.

"A Moment in the Sun": An Extended Interview with Independent Filmmaker, Author John Sayles

Today, a Democracy Now! special with legendary independent filmmaker and author, John Sayles. Over the past three decades, he has directed 17 feature films, including "Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Matewan," "Lone Star," and "Eight Men Out." He has often used his films to tackle pressing political issues, as well as themes of race, class, labor and sexuality. His latest film, "Amigo," which opened in August, is set in the Philippines during the U.S. occupation. Sayles is also a celebrated author. A winner of the O. Henry Award, he recently published his first novel in 20 years. It’s called "A Moment in the Sun," and it is a sprawling work which takes the turn of the 20th century in its sights — from a white racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, to the first stirrings of the motion picture industry, to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in Cuba and the Philippines. We spend the hour with Sayles, discussing his work and career. "However small your audience is, however frustrating it is to get your version of the world or what you want to talk about out there, it’s part of the conversation. And if you shut up, the conversation is one-sided," says Sayles.

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Source: Democracy Now! 

Occupy it forward: what next for Occupy Toronto?

Occupy, as its participants like to say in their gentle, optimistic style, is now “moving into the next phase.”

But it’s a forced evolution, thanks to the drawn-out, dramatic take-down in the mud of St. James Park on Wednesday, November 23. That eviction is the project of a municipal regime ready to intrude on the lives of many more people through service cuts than has the five-week bit of communal activity in a public green space.

The mobilization of green-vested park staff and the extensive police operation we witnessed Wednesday were ostensibly in support of a few dog walkers and a handful of disgruntled restaurant owners, whose rights, it seems, have trumped an urgent appeal for social fairness or what  Occupy lawyer Susan Ursel calls “an expression of conscience.”

Not to mention the fact that the contested terrain, on shelter-laden Jarvis, has long been a haven for the dispossessed. If you’re looking for a sense of proportion, don’t seek it here.

Debate erupts over resource-intensive G20 undercover operation

One day after six people pleaded guilty to encouraging vandalism at last year’s G20 summit, the undercover operation that made the case has touched off a debate about whether such resource-intensive tactics were worthwhile.

Two police officers infiltrated activist communities in Southern Ontario for a year and a half to glean intelligence about the group’s plans for the summit, employing techniques used to bust biker gangs and terrorist networks.

Lawyers and criminologists say the case should be subject to civilian oversight to ensure the money spent on it – hundreds of hours of officers’ time courting activists, buying them beer and ferrying them to meetings – was warranted and determine if similar investigations should be approved.

Constables Brenda Carey and Bindo Showan befriended anarchists in Guelph and Kitchener, reporting their plans to an RCMP-led Joint Intelligence Group monitoring threats to the G20. Constable Carey also wore a wire to the group’s final planning meeting.

Canada Child Exploitation, Senate Committee Says, Needs National Strategy

OTTAWA - The federal government needs to take the lead in fighting child exploitation in Canada starting with a national databank on the problem, a Senate committee said Thursday.

"Canadian children who are being sexually exploited, or are at risk of being sexually exploited, do not all have sufficient access to the services that could help them," the committee wrote in a report prepared after two years of study.

"Those currently working to help these children could benefit from co-ordinated efforts and shared expertise. The Government of Canada could show leadership in this area by facilitating the sharing of experiences and best practices amongst various stakeholders."

Members of the Senate human rights committee unanimously renewed an unheeded call from 2007 to name a parliamentary Children's Commissioner to represent the interests of the country's youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

That commissioner would ensure the government was taking effective steps to follow and address such issues as child abuse, child prostitution and child pornography, and make sure Canada was fulfilling its duties under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Pickton investigators were indifferent, Mountie says

A high-profile Mountie who recently came forward with allegations of sexual harassment in the RCMP has now made sensational new claims about the investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton.

Cpl. Catherine Galliford told CBC News earlier this month about abusive treatment inside the national police force, including sexual advances from several senior officers.

Galliford was the RCMP's spokeswoman during the Robert Pickton investigation and is scheduled to speak at the ongoing inquiry into the case, and told CBC News some of what she will reveal at the inquiry.

Galliford says she saw numerous problems inside the investigation, including investigators who were more interested in padding their paycheques and drinking alcohol than catching a serial killer.

"They would break between noon and 2 p.m. PT to just drink and party and go for lunch, but then they would go back to work on Friday and claim double-time," she said Wednesday.

Aboriginals hardest hit by economic downturn

The economic downturn bruised all types of workers – but some were hit harder than others.

Employment levels among aboriginal people tumbled further and declined over a longer period of time than among the non-aboriginal work force through the downturn.

A Statistics Canada paper released Wednesday paints a troubling picture for a demographic group that faced much higher-than-average jobless rates even before the recession.

It found the gaps in employment, unemployment and participation rates widened between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people over two years. By last year, the aboriginal jobless rate hit 12.3 per cent, compared with 6.8-per-cent among non-aboriginals.

“We should be concerned. Why? Because we are dealing already with some pretty horrific socio-economic gaps,” said Kelly Lendsay, president and CEO of the Saskatoon-based Aboriginal Human Resources Council, who is of Métis descent.

Super Committee's Failure Will Spur Hefty K-12 Cuts Without A Congressional Fix

Seventy thousand teaching jobs. More than one billion in Title I grants to disadvantaged school districts. Nearly 900 million in funding for special education students.

All these and more K-12 educational expenditures will be axed smack in the middle of the 2012-2013 school year -- barring an act of Congress that would prevent the automatic, across-the-board cuts set by this summer's debt deal from going into effect, according to the National Education Association.

These cuts became one step closer to reality when the 12-member congressional super committee's admitted Monday that it had failed to reach an agreement on trimming $1.2 trillion from the deficit.

And the triggered cuts will feel all the worse because they'll be widening still-open wounds of state-level cuts. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 37 states are providing less funding per-student this year than last. In 17 states, these funding levels are as much as 10 percent lower.

Police Tactics In Occupy Protests Vary From Crackdowns To 'Peaceful Coexistence'

NEW YORK -- In the two months since its inception in a small park in lower Manhattan, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread from coast to coast, inspiring hundreds of like-minded encampments and demonstrations in city centers and college campuses.

But while the vast majority of demonstrators have hewed consistently to a non-violent ethos, the tactics of law enforcement have been anything but uniform. From jurisdiction to jurisdiction, official responses have varied from paramilitary style crackdowns to peaceful accommodation.

In Oakland, Calif., riot-gear clad police officers cleared demonstrators from their encampment using rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, gravely wounding an Iraq war veteran in the process. At the University of California at Davis, campus police doused the faces of seated protesters with pepper spray at close range, in an incident that quickly went viral after video of the event appeared online.

Occupy Y'all Street: OWS Movement Takes Shape In Gainesville

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Ed Speanburgh is nearly inconsolable, sitting on a bench in the middle of Occupy Gainesville's encampment. It's his laptop. A fellow Occupier stepped on the power cord and broke the input.

Speanburgh runs Occupy Gainesville's livestream and needs his laptop to work. He is unemployed. He also needs his laptop to look for work.

Speanburgh, 42, does not want to talk to a pair of reporters who have parachuted into the quiet center of Occupy Gainesville from Washington, D.C., for the first leg of a nearly week-long road trip through occupy sites in the South -- what we've been calling "Occupy Y'All Street", an effort to capture the Dixie wing of the movement that has so far largely gone unnoticed as the media focus on high-profile police encounters on the east and west coasts.

Speanburgh says he has a truck -- but he hasn't made payments on it in six months. He has a townhouse, 20 miles away, past the University of Florida -- but he is days from losing it, and has no electricity or running water. So, he lives on donated Occupy Gainesville meals -- and his neighbor's tap water.