More than 400 Occupy Oakland demonstrators and a number of journalists were arrested in a violent confrontation on Jan. 28 when protesters attempted to convert a vacant building into a community center. Several hours later, a group of protesters separated from the crowd and entered City Hall, allegedly vandalizing the inside of the building.

The events were part of a demonstration called "Move-In Day," a plan to use the indoor base of Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center as headquarters for Occupy Oakland protesters to hold General Assemblies and for shelter during the winter, according to occupyoaklandmoveinday.org. The police response to the protesters' efforts entailed using tear gas, bean bag projectiles and flash grenades to disperse the crowd, according to a Jan. 30 Democracy Now! article.

"They are more interested in protecting abandoned private property than they are the people," Occupy Oakland member Maria Lewis said on Democracy Now!

News Release
Indiana AFL-CIO

INDIANAPOLIS - Following today's passage of the so-called "right to work" law, Indiana State AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott issued the following statement:

"On behalf of all working men and women across Indiana, we are extremely disappointed that the Indiana General Assembly has passed the "right to work for less" bill today. They have set our state upon a path that will lead to lower wages for all working Hoosiers, less safety at work, and less dignity and security in old age or ill health. Indiana's elected officials have given the wrong answer to the most important question of this generation.

Adbusters Magazine, the Vacnouver-based online publication that helped launch the Occupy Wall Street movement, posted a tactical briefing on its website on Jan. 25 calling for 50,000 protesters to participate in a showdown in Chicago at the May NATO and G-8 summits.

Titled “Tactical Briefing #25,” the post was an international rallying cry for radical revolutionaries around the world to participate in a month-long occupation against the backdrop of the international summit. Among those it sought were the "redeemers, rebels and radicals." The briefing encourages peaceful civil disobedience and summons a spirit reminiscent of the 1968 National Democratic Convention in Chicago that resulted in a police riot.

“On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month,” Adbusters.org’s briefing read. “With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.”

Truth be told, I was only half listening to President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address the other night. The once soaring rhetoric rings hollow these days. Not that I wasn’t skeptical of Mr. Hope-y Change-y from the get-go.

Even fervent Obama supporters are disappointed with the president’s inability – make that his unwillingness – to take on the moneyed interests that have colonized our politics and wrecked the economy. And Obama’s paean to militarism that bookended the SOTU makes it clear that the 2009 Noble Peace Prize winner has cast his lot with American Empire.

News Release
CWA Local 4730, AFCME Local 832

Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 4730, representing 1,650 support staff at Indiana University Bloomington and Northwest, and AFSCME Local 832, representing service maintenance staff at IU-B, is calling on President Michael McRobbie, Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald and IU board of trustees to do the fair, and right, thing with respect to cost-of-living raises for IU employees in 2012, as well as reinstating equity raises for those employees who have had, and will have, many additional job responsibilities added to their job descriptions due to personnel losses.

In recent years the IU Board of Trustees, President McRobbie, and many well-paid administrators have forced the lowest paid employees to make sacrifices during hard economic times, the same hard economic times that allowed McRobbie to accept a single raise greater than the rate of growth workers had seen in their checks over the last five years, combined.

News Release
Indiana AFL-CIO

INDIANAPOLIS – Following Gov. Mitch Daniels’ Republican response to the State of the Union address, Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott issued the following statement:

“The irony surrounding Gov. Daniels’ response to President Obama’s State of the Union Speech is seemingly endless. While the governor seemed unaware of the problems the president addressed in his speech, it almost seemed as if Gov. Daniels was talking about a completely different country, one with a completely different set of economic and social circumstances than the one we all actually live in.

News release
Indiana AFL-CIO

INDIANAPOLIS – Hoosiers overwhelmingly support a public referendum on the controversial “right to work” legislation and are unhappy with the Indiana General Assembly’s rush to pass it, a new poll conducted by the Indiana AFL-CIO this weekend found.

Among the survey’s finding were that only one-third of Indiana voters currently favor passage of so called “right to work” law, while 69 percent say that the Indiana General Assembly should slow down the process to allow more debate. The poll also found that an overwhelming 71 percent of respondents want to give voters — not the legislature — the final say on this controversial legislation.

News Release
Indiana AFL-CIO

In a must-read report issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Jan. 3, arguments made by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, American Legislative Exchange Council, National Right to Work Committee and other out-of-state and corporate special interest groups pushing for a so-called "right to work" (RTW) law here in Indiana are taken to the woodshed.

These groups have been playing fast and loose with the facts in an attempt to hide the political motivations behind "right to work" and distract our elected officials from working to create good jobs for Hoosier families. According to the EPI's independent review, statements and materials distributed by interest groups to the Indiana General Assembly have supplied lawmakers with blatantly incomplete, outdated and twisted information.

Seven weeks before Jill Stein declared her candidacy for president, the Lexington, Mass., physician outlined her priorities in a plan she called the "Green New Deal" – jobs, climate change, universal health care and peace. When she announced her bid for the Green Party nomination on Oct. 24, 2011, the Chicago native presented herself as an alternative to the two "Wall Street parties.”

“They’re privatizing education, rolling back civil liberties and racial justice, plundering the environment and driving us towards the calamity of climate change,” she said in a news release accompanying her announcement. "… We need people in Washington who refuse to be bought by lobbyist money and for whom change is not just a slogan.”

News Release
Millworkers Local 8093

OOLITIC - Millworkers’ Local Union 8093, which is currently on strike at Indiana Limestone Company, will be holding a community protest/rally this Saturday at the Lawrence County Courthouse. The protests purpose is to call upon County Prosecutor Michelle Woodward to do her job and investigate the violent “Assault with a Motor Vehicle” on Union members who were peacefully protesting at the Indiana Limestone Company.