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Tim Thompson: A Soldier for Voting Rights

"A Song for Trayvon" by Jasiri X - LIVE FROM BROOKLYN, NY

"A Song for Trayvon" - Lyrics by Jasiri X
(based on "No Church in the Wild" by Jay-Z & Kanye West)

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks the Internet

The video above discusses the Senate version of the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In the Senate the bill is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). SOPA has gotten more attention than PIPA because it was moving faster in the legislative process. But PIPA is just as dangerous, and now it is moving faster.

PIPA would give the government new powers to block Americans' access websites that corporations don't like. The bill lets corporations and the US government censor entire websites and cut sites off from advertising, payments and donations.

This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

Sacramento for Democracy to join Internet Blackout in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act


Sacramento for Democracy (http://sacramentofordemocracy.org)
will join thousands of websites across the world in an internet blackout on Wed. January 18, 2012 as we oppose the current internet censorship legislation in congress known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). We do this to raise awareness of this huge threat to an open internet.

You can learn more about this issue by clicking here.

Click here to send an email to your congressmembers and urge them to vote NO on SOPA (House members) and PIPA (Senate members). You can also call and fax them by clicking here.

President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Into Law

Posted by Amanda Simon, ACLU Blog of Rights

President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.

The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.

Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.

Bernie Sanders - No Deal Over A Bad Deal

Imagine if a bunch of Democrats started talking just like this? I know one that does and he's running for Congress: Norman Solomon

JVP Solidarity with Palestinian Freedom Riders

Images and video from the November 15, 2011 Palestinian Freedom Ride in the Occupied West Bank and a solidarity action organized by Jewish Voice For Peace in Baltimore, MD.

The Story of Broke: Why There's Still Plenty of Money to Build a Better Future

The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this ‘dinosaur economy’ on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It’s time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let’s build it better.

Bank information for Saturday's Bank Transfer Day

Below are the hours and locations for Saturday's Bank Transfer Day (nearest to Downtown Sacramento).  The Big Banks are listed first, followed by the Credit Unions and local banks.  Click on the name of each financial institution to go to their website for more information or other locations. Info on Occupy Sacramento's Boycott the Banks March is here.

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BANKS to CLOSE ACCOUNTS

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BANK OF AMERICA


Both downtown locations are closed on Saturday (1130 K St, 555 Capitol Mall)

Closest open locations:

1515 Broadway - @ 15th St. (open 9 - 1)

1100 Alhambra Blvd - @ K St. (open 9 - 1)

1511 W Capitol Ave - West Sac (open 9 - 1)



WELLS FARGO

400 Capitol Mall - @ 4th St. (open 9 - 6)

1831 S Street - @ 19th St. (open 9 - 6)

3001 Capitol Ave - @ 30th St. (open 9 - 6)



Jesus is With the 99% - free sticker

The 99 Percent Rise Up

John Nichols | October 12, 2011 | The Nation

How did Occupy Wall Street suddenly become Occupy Los Angeles? Occupy Cleveland? Occupy Janesville? Occupy Pocatello? How did a sleep-in beneath the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan inspire kayakers clad as Robin Hood to paddle up the Chicago River under a banner reading, Wall St. Takes From the 99%. Gives to the Rich? And how did those giant cutouts of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon end up dancing with all those San Franciscans chanting, “Make banks pay”? Despite what Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain suggests, it was not some “orchestrated” attempt to deflect blame from the flawed policies of the Obama administration. It was not the media looking for a “left-wing Tea Party.” And it certainly was not a poll-tested, focus-grouped PR campaign that billionaire-funded front groups employ to gin up movements.

Occupy Wall Street started small, took a beating from the cops and struggled for weeks to get the attention of the political class, the media and even its own natural allies. The only thing going for this unlikely intervention has been the pitch-perfect resonance of its founding premises. The American people understood Occupy Wall Street, and began to embrace its promise, long before the mandarins who presume to chart our national discourse noticed that everything was changing. That’s because the generators of this movement—and it is a movement—have gotten three things right from the start:

If a Republican Were President ...

Friday 14 October 2011
by: Robert Scheer, Truthdig | Op-Ed

If a Republican were president, there would be millions of properly coiffed middle-class Democrats and independents at those Occupy Wall Street marches, and no questions asked as to what they really want. With 25 million Americans unable to find full-time work, 50 million whose homeownership dream has turned into the nightmare of foreclosure, and an all-time high of 46.2 million -- including 22 percent of our children -- living in poverty, the call to throw the bums out would be compelling.

But the protest signs in a nation headed by a Republican, though surely gussied up a bit with ad-agency savvy, would be the same as they are now: Stop catering to the top 1 percent who get ever wealthier, and focus on helping the 99 percent who are hurting. To accomplish that, we need a moratorium on bank-ordered evictions, along with a government-funded program to aid the underemployed that is as robust as the trillions spent to save the Wall Street swindlers who caused all of this trouble.

Instead, we're left with a Democratic president who sooths our rage with promises of decent-paying jobs that in actuality are being vigorously exported from our shores by the president's top corporate backers. That absurdity was marked by Barack Obama's choice of Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric -- a company that has shifted to foreign countries two-thirds of its workforce and 82 percent of its profits -- to head the president's job creation council.

Our Permit to Occupy is Called the 1st Amendment

I Am Not Moving!

The hypocrisy of how our government supports protests in the Middle East but not here at home.

Occupy Sacramento livestream videos

If you cannot make it down to Occupy Sacramento, you can try following them on the following livestream videos. They are up intermittently, so you may have to check a few of them to find a live one.

You can also watch livestreams from all over the country here:
http://occupystream.com/

Artists Challenge Ten Years of War

For ten years, the U.S. has been at war in Afghanistan. The human cost continues to mount.

This short video, using mural images from AFSC's Windows and Mirrors Exhibit (http://windowsandmirrors.org), makes a powerful statement about the human cost of the war in Afghanistan. Visit the WAM website to see all the artwork - and to join AFSC's efforts to end the war.