Who knew there would still be people protesting all this time? Seriously? When we started buying solidarity pizzas last week we had no idea we'd still be doing it now. It's mainly thanks to you guys. Over 500 of you have donated over $18,000. We've bought pies for 22 cities totaling more than $13,000 and we're still going. Occupy Wall Street is growing and so...we can't stop now.

Yesterday at Occupy LA they told me that the 36 pizzas we buy them go quick. They said they could use three times that. They are now reporting a tent count of 253. Which is exponentially larger than their first day.

Total we've bought pizzas for 22 occupations in different cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, DC/K Street, Tampa, Philly, San Diego, Denver, Austin, Portland, Indianapolis, New Orleans, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, San Jose and Des Moines.

Some we're feeding every day. Some we've inspired to get their own donations. It's been amazing. You can still participate. It's not over! I asked an occupier yesterday how long they are staying. She replied: "I don't know, I've never revolutionized before."

More pictures after the jump:

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(Clip came from an old TDS show which highlights the extreme right attacks against Cindy Sheehan)

Michelle Malkin made her living for years out of releasing personal information of people she attacked like the students from UC Santa Cruz. I was in the middle of that story because the students were scared after their info became public and asked me for help. After that Malkin stalked the Frost family in an effort to intimidate them because they dared to believe differently than her tea party beliefs.

When this brow-beater releases personal information like that, it's also a warning to anyone else not to take a stand against any type of inequality or injustice. They make it clear you will have to pay a heavy price if you stick up for average American families, LBGT rights, unions, prisoner rights, woman's choice and any number of other issues that conservatives oppose. A toll many people do not want to pay. Who would?

The John and Ken Show is a very popular KFI radio program. They are very out spoken in California and can drive local narratives mostly in the right-wing direction, but when they gave out someone's personal cell phone number, that type of behavior is a firing offense. Here's the scoop:

Long-time immigrant rights activist Jorge-Mario Cabrera is used to being called to task for his views. But when radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou recently gave out his cellphone number on the air in a campaign against the California Dream Act, he found himself unprepared for the barrage of hate-filled phone calls that followed.

"Hi, this message is for Mr. Cabrera," one caller said in a voice mail transcribed by Cabrera. "Listen, you pile of garbage…You need to pack your [expletive] up and go back to wherever it is you came from. Nobody wants you here. You are invading the legal people that are in this country and ruining this country. I hope you choke in your own vomit."
In the days after the KFI-AM (640) radio hosts read Cabrera's cellphone and office numbers on the air and told listeners opposed to state tuition assistance for illegal immigrants to call him, Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, got more than 400 calls, many of them filled with hateful language and calls for violence.

"It's never been as cutting, as humiliating as these calls were," Cabrera said. "These calls were intent to diminish me as a person." The incident struck a chord among leaders of civil and immigrant rights groups across the state, many of whom saw it as the latest example in a long history of the popular radio show inciting anger and vitriol.

"It was the last straw," said Alex Nogales, president and chief executive of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. "These guys have been at it day in and day out. It's the same ugly rhetoric."

The National Hispanic Media Coalition led what some believe was a successful campaign to get television host Lou Dobbs off the air at CNN for similar reasons. Dobbs resigned days after the coalition's president met with the head of the news network, but the network has denied that the meeting led to the resignation.

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Occupy Philly: Oct 9, 2011 from Joel Mathis on Vimeo.

I've been to Occupy Philly every day now, and it's growing rapidly. Today I dropped off some supplies and spoke to Erika Bell from the food committee. Right now, she said, they're trying to batten down the hatches because rain's moving in Wednesday.

Here's what they need:

• Wood pallets to keep the supplies off the ground.

• Tarps to cover supplies.

• Rolls of heavy plastic sheeting

• Large Rubbermaid-type containers

• Rain gear (ponchos, etc.)

• Bungee cords

If anyone has those freestanding backyard canopies, Occupy Philly is using them. I dropped off one of those folding chairs that come in the carry bags -- they can probably use more of those, too. As usual, yoga pads, camping cots and mattresses, etc. are useful to those sleeping there.

Not everyone can camp out all night on Dilworth Plaza. (I, for one, am too old and arthritic.) But everyone can help. Thankfully, dropping off donations and supplies couldn't be easier: Drive around City Hall, staying in the lane closest to the sidewalk. The food tent is on the north side of City hall (JFK Boulevard), directly across from the Municipal Services Building. Pull into the parking spot and if you need assistance, someone will help you unload.

Gov. Brown did something right for California.

LA Times:

Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday granted illegal immigrants access to state financial aid at public universities and community colleges, putting California once again in the center of the nation's immigration debate.

But he vetoed a measure that would have allowed state universities to consider applicants' race, gender and income to ensure diversity in their student populations.

Deciding the fate of 50 education-related bills, the governor also rejected an effort to make it more difficult to establish charter schools. But he accepted a move to improve college life for gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender people and a measure to restrict the privatization of libraries.

None of the other proposals, however, has drawn the attention — or rancor — surrounding the California Dream Act. Most Republican legislators voted against it, and anti-illegal-immigration groups denounced it as unfair.

Brown's signature on the bill fulfilled a campaign promise to allow high-achieving students who want to become citizens the opportunity to attend college, regardless of their immigration status....read on

Wednesday night, broadcasting from Liberty Square in lower Manhattan, MSNBC's Ed Schultz rhetorically asked his guests if the Democrats were the biggest winners of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The crowd laughed a little at the myopic spin.

Thursday, Rush Limbaugh – citing an unnamed, likely imaginary “friend” – said that Obama's actually behind Occupy Wall Street, and, laughably, that the President's been planning “riots” for months. Riots. Planning. For months.

Although I can easily imagine both of these guys ending up in the same ICU for similar gasket-blowing ailments, I'm not playing the false equivalence card. These individual acts of stupidity are not equal, but they are both incredibly wrong.

El Rushbo's lying. No one told him this. And if they did, that person (Herman Cain?) was lying. He's a leaky bucket of bile; these are known knowns.

Schultz isn't lying. But he is off by a mile. This movement is rooted deeper than America's shallow, money-infested political dichotomy, but, indeed, it's been fertilized by this Democratic Administration's bullshit.

Rush is right: a good number of these kids turned out for Obama. Some of the protesters I talked to last weekend will hold their noses and vote Obama in 2012. Some will not. And all of them are painfully aware that despite Limbaugh's – and other insane right-wing – charges of “socialism,” Obama is Jeb Bush with a better jump shot. They know Dodd-Frank is a watered down bowl of nothing. They know that both parties are bought and sold by the same moneyed interests. They know recessions are worsened by so-called “austerity” measures. They know this pay-to-play political paradigm must crumble, for democracy to function properly.

If the Democrats gain from this movement it will be by embracing the populist sentiment of the now nationwide occupation, and making good on it if elected. No doubt Dems will co-opt the message. But will they deliver? Will we see this real populist movement translated into policy, as we saw the fringe tea party set affect the national dialogue?

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It is highly unlikely that anything will happen to former deli owner and current police inspector Tony Baloney as a result of this investigation (after all, cops routinely get away with killing people and this was only pepper spray), but you never know. They might come up with a minor infraction and give him a symbolic punishment so they can claim "justice" was done. Which is the exact same approach all those people in Zuccotti Park are protesting, but you know how it goes:

The police and Manhattan prosecutors are separately examining a high-ranking officer’s use of pepper spray on a number of female protesters at a demonstration on Saturday.

Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner of the New York Police Department, said Wednesday that its Internal Affairs Bureau would look at the decision by the officer, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, to use pepper spray, even as Mr. Kelly criticized the protesters for “tumultuous conduct.”

At the same time, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has opened an investigation into the episode, which was captured on video and disseminated on the Internet, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing.

Inspector Bologna was identified on Wednesday in another video spraying others in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration with pepper spray. Recordings of the episodes show Inspector Bologna striding through a chaotic street scene along East 12th Street, where officers arrested some protesters and corralled others behind orange mesh netting.

Deputy Inspector Roy T. Richter, the head of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that represents the upper echelons of city officers, said Inspector Bologna, who formerly led the 1st Precinct and now works in counterterrorism, would “cooperate with whatever investigative body the police commissioner designates to perform this review.”

The latest stories from the front lines of the labor fight across the country...

Unions covering employees that work for Verizon have launched the iWon't campaign, calling on people not to upgrade to the new IPhone on Verizon until the company agrees to a fair contract.

Early voting has begun in the election to repeal Ohio Gov. John Kasich's anti-collective bargaining law.

Project Labor Agreements help create middle class jobs.

Legislators in Massachusetts, including some Democrats are seeking to cut the collective bargaining power of municipal workers.

Why is Democrat Jerry Brown blocking unionization of child care workers.

The new deal between the United Auto Workers and Ford looks to create 12,000 new jobs in the U.S..

The Colombia Action Plan isn't ending the violence against union members or improving workers' rights. Take action to fight the Colombia and Korea and Panama trade deals.

The AFL-CIO condemns Bank of America's new fees on debit card usage.

Not suprisingly, traditional pension plans are more cost-effective.

Cambridge, Mass., is attempting to prevent hotels from outsourcing jobs.

The workers furloughed by Republicans during the shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration have won back pay.

House Republicans are trying to get rid of a law designed to provide safety for rooftop workers.

Republicans are fighting for China at the expense of American workers.

General Electric hasn't been paying into their pension plan for decades.

The latest labor unions showing their support for Occupy Wall Street are National Nurses United, Laborers' International Union of America, United Steelworkers, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, the American Federation of Musicians, the United Transit Workers, the United Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Also joining in is Working America.

Tengrain here. Wolfrum is always a hard act to follow, but let's give it a try. The Economy is on my mind today, but luckily it is on the mind of a lot of bloggers, too.

Just an Earth-Bound Misfit explains the difference between bankers and mobsters.

Politics Plus wonders if the American Jobs Act will perform as claimed, and then looks at the GOP alternative.

The Border Explorer looks at the draconian anti-immigration law in Alabama that is supposed to spur jobs for Americans.

Bonus Track: The Bloggess gives a small business owner an object-lesson on PR and how to not use the Reply All button.

Round-up by Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors who also blogs at Dependable Renegade. Send tips to: mbru@crooksandliars.com

EpicStep, a kickstarter-esque website that crowdsources funds for billboards, has pledged to pay for an Occupy Wall Street billboard if 20,000 people vote for it on their website. People can vote on the design and city where it will be built, and if enough people vote, EpicStep will fund it. If 200,000 people vote, they will buy ad space for two Occupy Wall Street billboards in Times Square. We spoke with one of EpicStep’s founders, and they told us that they approached Occupy Wall Street with the idea and “they loved it.” So far, the campaign only has 694 votes, but there are 29 days remaining.

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