December 6, 2011, was a national day of action targeting homes facing foreclosure, organized by a coalition of community groups behind the movement Occupy Our Homes. Protests were held across the country, in cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Portland, OR, and more.
Actions included “reclaiming” houses that banks are leaving vacant, and “home defense” to stop banks from foreclosing and accept payments from the homeowners, which banks like Chase and Wells Fargo are refusing to do in some cases.
Some of the groups involved in the community resistance effort include ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), The New Bottom Line, ReFund California, New York Communities for Change, Occupy Wall Street, Take Back the Land, SOUL (Chicago), SEIU, and The Coffee Party. [Read more]
Though the manifold problems of money pouring into our campaigns have become a source of daily news and mounting public backlash, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission is an opportunity to review how this transformative decision was reached – the perfect storm of politicized jurisprudence, corporate entitlement, and a narrowly tilted bench.
As Chief Justice, John Roberts has expressed such concern over corporate rights, one might think he was found as a boy abandoned, taken in, and raised by some corporations. It was Roberts who directed the narrow issue of FEC penalties over ads for Hillary: The Movie to be rewritten and re-argued as a much broader debate over the right for corporations to spend money freely on third party advertisements.
The murky reasoning in the 5-4 decision is a swirl of citations to numerous codes that apparently somehow offer sufficient paradox that a century of laws passed by lawmakers over generations of Congress that restrictions on the federal and state level had to be knocked down, leaving almost no sense of legal authority on the subject.
How has this decision stood, two years later? Well, people have literally been taking to the streets across the country in outrage over this decision and corporate influence on public policy. In fact, this decidedly undemocratic ruling — five opinions against American law and overwhelming public opinion — has been such a galvanizing injection into the populace, Citizens United vs. FEC may prove to be the birth to an era of reform. [Read more]
This year during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, amongst the corporate carpet bombing of branded swag up and down Main Street, there will be a venue for voices other than studio buzz machines, celebrity side projects, and gossip columnists. While the exclusivity of the Sundance Film Festival has long fostered start-up film fests to showcase other independent films alongside the star-studded lineup, this year brings a new kind of screening event to the cinephile maelstrom.
Filmmaker Donn “D.J.” Viola was struck by the odds of inclusion in the coveted landmark independent film festival: Out of 11,700 entries, only 180 were chosen, 1.538%. Parallel to the Occupy Movement’s empowering the bottom 99%, Viola sought to provide some kind of platform for the approximately 32 films made every day of the last year.
Going further, such a context could allow for more political films than might usually be included in the crop of Sundance selections. While Sundance has long been a strong supporter of environmental topics, the timeliness of a film festival is a unique challenge — where the transformative Occupy Wall Street movement sprung up in October and swept the national discourse, the deadline for submissions to Sundance was in September. [Read more]
Sunday, Jan. 8, will be the final day of Mr. Brainwash’s Art Show 2011, an exhibition which has drawn thousands each day to behold the childlike imagination of Thierry Guetta. This abandoned industrial space also happens to be adorned with a significant contribution from the street art community of Los Angeles, after Brainwash allowed 20,000 square feet of the ground floor to be entirely covered with other people’s posters, paintings, stickers and spray paint.
This mammoth art show will not be viewable somewhere else down the line. In fact, after this last day of viewing, the building is reportedly slated to be demolished. Street art is not intended to last, and here it won’t even last inside an empty building.
And yet, it was the barren behemoth building that first drew Thierry Guetta to tackle it with his vision of graffiti-fueled pop art installations and wild remixes of celebrity iconography. In this exclusive short documentary, Thierry Guetta shares his dreams and travails of trying to turn a dilapidated factory into a Street Art Vatican.
When you’re Thierry Guetta, your biggest challenge may be how to top yourself. After an extravagant debut art show that drew thousands in 2008, and starring in the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, there may be little else but to live the life of an artist whose work is in demand. But it might be Thierry’s trademark enthusiasm to take on much more than he probably should that inspires him to do anything.
And in the center of Los Angeles, just off Santa Monica and La Brea, he found an urban adversary worthy of his determination: an abandoned industrial complex, over 80,000 square feet. What first seemed like a Russian temple waiting to be christened became a never-ending barrage of repairs, inspectors and maintenance, while he was hoping to use it as an art studio rather than an urban renewal project. “I almost gave up,” he says wearily. “It was too much.”
But perseverance paid off, and the long announced Art Show 2011 will in fact be opening in 2011. This marks an art opening not just for Mr. Brainwash, but for the scores of street artists that were welcomed to decorate 20,000 square feet on the first floor of the Brainwash building. Over several days in October, Thierry threw open the doors to the public to decorate his walls with street art. The open house that ensued was dubbed a “Woodstock of Street Art” by venerable street art blog Melrose & Fairfax. Local street artists could work without fear of arrest, and also get to watch other artists work that they might not get to meet otherwise. Many older artists showed up and contributed pieces of art they had made, which they would not dare risk putting up on streets. This cavern of creative contributions is the setting for only part of Mr. Brainwash’s show. [Read more]
Professor Lawrence Lessig discusses his new book “Republic, Lost” and our need to attack systemic corruption perpetuated through the lobbyist system.
Over his career, Ron English has taken a love of pop art and transformed the aesthetic into his own vision of appropriating icons and subverting corporate cartoons with photo-realism. His outdoors work in murals, billboard takeovers, and brand parodies since the 1980′s is why English is considered to be a father of street art, bridging the wild style graffiti genre with gallery pop art impact. English has long established his distinct voice through childhood iconography with provocative social criticisms, and evolves as an artist into an ever-increasing number of directions. [Read more]
Ohioans go to the polls tomorrow to decide on SB5, a bill passed by the Ohio legislature that intends to dissolve public employee unions. This law is similar to one that was enacted in Wisconsin earlier in the year, but it goes further, to include the dissolution of firefighters and police unions. The placement of this ballot measure to be able to vote down SB5 was achieved by a referendum submitted with over 300,000 signatures. Along with a referendum on whether Ohio will recognize any national healthcare legislation, this off-year election has shaped up to be a contentious one, with significant Get Out The Vote efforts on both sides.
Besides being a perennial swing state, Ohio itself is a bellwether for the national mindset and prognosticator for political trends. The presidential election of 2004 revealed rampant breakdowns in election administration by Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, disenfranchising thousands from voting in a close election. A subsequent investigation of the House Judiciary Committee led by Rep. John Conyers reported:
“We find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.”
In the wake of the 2004 election meltdown, concerned citizens banded together to document the 2006 national elections, using the newly-launched YouTube for real-time reporting on voter intimidation, closed polling places, misinformation, long lines, or any other problems.
Reportedly Banksy left a new piece of art in support of the Occupy London movement.
The piece features the Monopoly Man with a five o’clock shadow and looking like he has fallen on rough times. The board pieces that can be seen from the include a light bulb and the kaiserrort.com. Perhaps our favorite part about this piece is the tagging and Tox bubble letters on the house.
Also dig how it utilized the Monopoly Man, whom we have come to enjoy seeing on the streets from LA’s own Alec Monopoly.
This is being reported as Banksy’s piece, although it has not yet been confirmed on Banksy’s website. (Sourced from the Banksy Forums)
***First pic from London Photographer Jason Reeve***
I guess what set me off on a course of independent political media was a combination of Bush I & Bush II, 13 years apart.
In high school, while I was immersed in journalism and theater, the Gulf War crystallized an understanding in me that there is a larger war machine in this country that outlasts sitting presidents, and that reality needed to be shared through mainstream entertainment somehow. That time also got me into organizing anti-war demonstrations, public speaking at events, and networking with activists.
After the rampant election fraud that transpired in the Ohio 2004 presidential election, I felt I had no choice but to do my small part to become the media. The miraculous new era of digital video and social media didn’t make citizen journalism possible, but mandatory. [Read more]
From RT International‘s coverage of Occupy Wall Street.
John Wellington Ennis, a filmmaker and contributor to the Huffington Post, believes that people have taken the only means left for them to express their discontent.
“When you go into protest and when you appear in public in support of a cause, you don’t know what ripples you are creating,” he said.
“I think the protesters are so united that it did not even need a common purpose to be stated,” he added. “There is such a common frustration, and there have been so many patient stages by the US people to wait for reform efforts.”
What is surprisingly unique about the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, and supporting actions across the country, is the broad immediate support without an immediately stated objective. With so little coverage and a yet unspecified goal, major unions lent their support, supportive occupations cropped up nationwide, and the numbers in Liberty Park are growing despite NYPD crackdowns.
Unlike anti-war marches, Tea Party gatherings, or other well-worn modes of protest, the notion of an in-person response to Wall Street’s unchecked looting of the economy apparently did not need much explaining. That is because many Americans have been living with painful awareness that their hardships in recent years are related in a myriad of ways to reckless trading, predatory loans, and manifold illegal banking practices, all perpetrated by the same executives still receiving multi-million dollar bonuses whose guilt is trumped by the notion that their companies are Too Big To Fail.
None of these many abuses by financial institutions collectively referred to as Wall Street are new information. It’s not like people just flooded the streets upon hearing that Bank of America is trying to tack on another surcharge, just after laying off over 50,000 employees, just after widespread manipulation of their loan business was deemed not criminal, by their own accord. (No, that move by B of A was just easy pickings for Democrats trying to remember their purpose.)
It’s not like Americans did not wait while the federal government negotiated good-faith interest-free loans to keep huge banks and firms afloat, at the price to taxpayers, many of whom were struggling to stay afloat themselves under variable interest or inflated mortgages foisted upon them by said financial giants. It’s not like financial regulations weren’t proposed to Congress, with larger reforms left by the wayside, and in the final decision by the Federal Reserve on the Durbin Amendment of the Dodd-Frank Finanical Act, credit card companies somehow get to charge more for debit swipes than they had even hoped. Bank lobbyists paid off, in more than one sense. [Read more]
Morley is the antithesis of street artists in Los Angeles. Where traditional taggers obscure their name in scrawled script only readable to their own, Morley prints big messages with his large bold lettering. Where most find it cool to be cryptic, Morley shares his wit in complete sentences. Where many street artists prefer anonymity or an empowered alter-ego, Morley includes a plain drawing of his unglamorous self writing each ironic aphorism. His humor veers from self-deprecating to sly, his insight ranges from soul searching to silly.
Morley is so un-street art, he walks around in broad daylight plastering his posters up in the busiest intersections. It was a privilege to document the artist at work, if only to be able to capture the meta moments of the artist putting up art of himself putting up his art.
In this short documentary, Morley explains how he uses hope and humor in efforts to lift the unsuspecting viewer.
Much of today’s street art is reflective of Andy Warhol’s signature style of celebrity iconography, stenciled composites, and above all, repetition of imagery. It is no wonder Warhol’s ideas, Sixties images, and commercial success have inspired young artists to take to the streets. So it is both intuitively astute and perfectly logical to see Andy Warhol’s stenciled visage appear across Los Angeles over the past year signed simply “Thank You, X.”
Thank You X intended his moniker to simply be “X,” the penultimate pseudonym of an anonymous artist. But as curious fans might not be able to Google “X” at their workplace without fear of reprisal, “Thank You X” has stuck as his nom de guerre. The image of Warhol used in X’s pieces is from a lesser-known photo taken by an assistant of Warhol’s to build his portfolio. The casual, unguarded spontaneity in this head shot of Warhol looking away suggests a genuine appreciation of a subject whose mind is often elsewhere. 
[Read more]
A lobbying battle is raging largely behind the scenes over a seemingly obscure executive order that could — if signed by President Obama — make public the political spending that many corporations can now keep secret.
Under the proposed order, all companies bidding for federal contracts would be required to disclose money spent on political campaign efforts, including dollars forwarded through associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other private groups.
Election spending by such organizations soared to new heights in 2010, thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations and unions to make direct political expenditures. The majority opinion endorsed disclosure of the new political spending, but many groups have formed as nonprofits, which do not have to reveal their funding sources.
Since then, campaign finance reform advocates and their Democratic allies have sought to unmask the secret contributions fueling the groups, arguing that such spending allows wealthy individuals, corporations and other special interests to have an outsized influence on elections without voters knowing who is behind the effort. [Read more]
A new report to be released today will show one in 10 properties in three of the state’s largest cities have been in foreclosure since the beginning of the housing crisis, disproportionately afflicting areas with nonwhite populations, activists say.
The report, being released in advance of JPMorgan Chase’s shareholder meeting May 17, demonstrates as well that more than one out of every 20 housing units in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus have been lost in foreclosure and have became bank-owned property during the last three years, according to National People’s Action, which is unveiling the report.
Ohio is one of the states hardest hit by the epidemic of foreclosure and joblessness. More than 280,000 homes are expected to go into foreclosure in Ohio by the end of next year, putting families out on the street and depleting the local tax base, the activists said. The cost of JPMorgan Chase foreclosures to Ohio taxpayers alone is estimated at $5.4 billion. [Read more]
The Center for Responsive Politics revealed Thursday that corporate campaign spending has skyrocketed since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission decision in January 2010. The report comes at the same time as the first major state-level challenge to the controversial ruling.
In the run-up to the 2008 election, Citizens United, a conservative organization that has since aligned itself with the tea party, produced an attack film with the on-the-nose title Hillary: The Movie. When a D.C. court ruled that advertising and widely screening Hillary would be a violation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, Citizens United took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 ruling, the Court ultimately determined that corporate expenditures on “electioneering” constitute a form of protected free speech, and that neither state nor federal law can bar corporations or non-profits from using general treasury funds to support or oppose a candidate. At the time, former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who lost his re-election bid in 2010 to tea partier Daniel Webster, called Citizens United “the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case.”
The Center for Responsive Politics now finds that, following the Citizens United decision, midterm spending on campaign ads and electioneering efforts by outside interest groups (including corporations, nonprofit interest groups and unions) has quadrupled. Moreover, 72 percent of spending for ads around the 2010 election came from groups that were legally barred from such spending before the Court made its decision. Although unions and liberal nonprofits have taken advantage of the ruling, outside spending from conservative groups is where the true growth has occurred. In 2010, election spending from conservative groups without direct party connections was up nearly 10 times what it was during the last midterm election cycle. At $190.5 million, it was also nearly double the $98.6 million that non-party-affiliated liberal groups spent on the 2010 election. [Read more]
Oil baron David Koch has made it clear he is no fan of President Barack Obama, but Wednesday night he provided a fresh reason for his anti-Obama views: the president is frightening.
Obama is “a hardcore socialist,” Koch told the New York Magazine at a spring ball, “and he’s marvelous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He’s scary to me.”
Koch and his brother Charles are owners of the energy company Koch Industries. The brothers were principle financiers of Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker and the tea party movement. They are also supporters of free market groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation.
In addition to being a scary hardcore socialist, David Koch said that Obama deserved no credit for the operation that tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden.
“He just made the decision, it was obvious where the guy is,” he told the magazine. “He was one of the worst terrorists organizing attacks on the United States. I mean, no president in his right mind would not approve that decision to go eliminate him.”
Unprecedented political spending. Secret donors. New ways for unions and corporations to spend money on politics.
An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics reveals that the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling of January 2010 has profoundly affected the nation’s political landscape.
Corporations and unions both benefited from the ruling, being able to use their general treasuries to pay for independent expenditures for the first time.
[Read more]
Everyone has a “junk drawer” in the kitchen — a place to stow scissors and other odds and ends that you just don’t know what else to do with.
The Ohio House of Representatives has a junk drawer, too — House Bill 153. You think that’s Ohio’s next budget. But tucked between the 4,000-page budget’s dollar amounts and Revised Code bafflegab is a slew of ideas that, on their own, might never pass.
That fact is inconvenient to (supposedly) small-government Ohio Republicans, who for generations railed against Democratic “logrolling” — that is, winning votes for tough bills by slipping them into politically sweeter measures.
And make no mistake, even HB 153′s purported austerity is plenty sweet for the army of spenders that swarms the Statehouse like an 11th Plague of Egypt. [Read more]