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On October 28th, San Diego police raided the Occupy San Diego encampments at Civic Center Plaza and Children’s Park – arresting 53 protesters.

Yesterday – December 9th – was the arraignment date of nearly all those arrested, but it turns out only 3 were actually charged with criminal or Municipal code violations.

October 28th – or actually the very early hours of October 29th – was the night of the horrific show of brute force of hundreds of SDPD and Sheriffs Deputies, where people were rousted without warning from their sleeping bags, some trampled on by police as officers rampaged the camps at 2:00 a.m.

By Anne Geiger / Public Policy Blogger

Refreshing to read Kathleen Parker this morning as she eviscerates the “big” idea of ever-pompous Newt Gingrich to give poor kids the work ethic he believes they lack by firing their school custodians and pay the kids to—- clean the floors, desks, windows and cafeteria tables, scrub and sanitize bathroom sinks and toilets, sweep sidewalks, shovel snow, bag and dispose of trash and garbage, clear clogged pipes, etc. etc. This, mind you, while putting aside their real job of learning every day.

By John W. Whitehead / Huffington Post / Dec. 6, 2011

America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued for the past ten years, has forever altered the political and legal landscape of our country. It has chipped away at our freedoms and is unraveling our Constitution. Even now, with Osama bin Laden having been killed and al Qaeda dismantled by a series of high-profile assassinations, the war hawks continue to rattle their sabers. Yet while more and more Americans join the call for a de-escalation of military actions abroad, those clamoring for war have turned their focus inwards. As Senator Lindsay Graham recently remarked as an explanation for his support of legislation allowing for the indefinite detention of Americans, “Is the homeland the battlefield? You better believe it is the battlefield.”

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Prosecutors on Wednesday abandoned their 30-year pursuit of the execution of convicted police killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther whose claim that he was the victim of a racist legal system made him an international cause celebre.

Abu-Jamal, 58, will instead spend the rest of his life in prison. His writings and radio broadcasts from death row had put him at the center of an international debate over capital punishment.

My Occupy LA Arrest

by Patrick Meighan / blogspot / December 6, 2011

My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”

By OccupySD Media team

• OSD to march this evening to protest continued violations of 1st Amendment rights
• Protesters demand police chief resignation
• Police spokesman lies about reason for latest police raid
• Another protester to join hunger strike

Occupy San Diego will march Tuesday December 6 at 6:30pm from Freedom Plaza (formerly known as Civic Center) to the San Diego Police station on Broadway and 14th in protest of the continued police brutality, misconduct and unlawful arrests at the OSD protests.

By Robert Johnson / Business Insider/ Dec. 5, 2011

The U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will.

We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens.

Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the “1033 Program” that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / Dec. 5, 2011

We are so frequently exposed to violence in the United States, most of us probably figure that, like pornography, we know violence when we see it. Enemies go to war, and we watch the carnage live on TV’s 24-hour news cycle. People physically harm each other on our streets and in our homes, and we tally their numbers with the rest of the tidy crime statistics. We replicate violent imagery in film and television, in music and video games, and eagerly consume it as entertainment. Yes, violence is pervasive, and most of us probably figure we have it pegged. But we’d be wrong.

By Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / December 5, 2011

With the state budget poised to dramatically under-deliver and trigger large budget cuts for schools across the state, local media has spent a couple months wading into the looming financial crisis at San Diego Unified for a while now. And while the immediacy of the local challenges makes it crucial to cover well, it isn’t like this is a crisis in a vacuum.

Any discussion of the budgetary straitjacket in Sacramento that’s made this budget crisis inevitable has been strikingly absent, aside from the perfunctory ‘state’s broken’ before getting into mitigating the effects.

Help defend families facing foreclosure and support filling empty, bank-owned homes with those in need.

By Dave Lagstein, ACCE

Last week thousands made a pledge to defend our homes and communities from the big Wall Street banks that have been on a three-year-long foreclosure binge, kicking struggling families out of homes all across the country.

The 99% is saying “No” and fighting back against the big banks in a big way. Community members nationwide are rallying to stop foreclosures, keep families in their homes, and fill vacant homes with displaced residents.

Coming to a Theater Near You: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization

By William deBuys / TomDispatch.com / Dec. 4, 2011

Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought. As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat. It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

By Josh Richman / Oakland Tribune / November 29, 2011

California voters are almost evenly split, largely along ideological lines, over whether they identify with the Occupy movement, according to a new Field Poll.

The poll found 46 percent of California’s voting public identifies a lot or some with the Occupy movement, while 49 percent declare not much identification with it. But while voters are closely divided in their identification with the movement, a 58 percent to 32 percent majority say they agree with the protests’ underlying reason while the remaining 10 percent expressed no opinion. The pollsters didn’t provide those it surveyed with a description of that reason.