by Nicole Powers

After 50 hours on the road, and three days without a proper night’s sleep, tiredness was becoming a serious factor. Our ragtag group of activists, occupiers, and livestreamers had gathered in Pershing Square between 3 and 4 AM on the morning of Wednesday, May 16, and most, including us, had foregone sleep the night before in order to make last-minute preparations. The expected 4 AM departure of the three 99% Solidarity-organized and National Nurses United-funded Los Angeles occu-buses had been delayed for two hours while we awaited the arrival of the Bay Area Nine – a heroic group of Oakland and San Francisco occupiers who had traveled down via Greyhound after their direct ride to Chicago had been cancelled at short notice. It was therefore around 6 AM before we finally set off from Downtown LA.

Our journey time had been further extended by two separate cases of overheated-engine syndrome as we convoyed through the Nevada desert, and a minor medical emergency 100+ miles away from the Illinois state line. A few over-extended, but essential, pee and smoke breaks had also impacted our ETA. When we arrived at our final destination, a short walk away from Occupy Chicago’s Convergence Center at around 6 AM on Friday May 19, we were nearly half a day late. But despite the exhaustion, our spirits were for the most part high, boosted by the excitement of what was to come, and by the beauty of the city, which the majority of our group had never visited before.

As one of three designated bus captains, I hung around to make sure everyone was situated. Since the lateness of our arrival meant we’d mostly missed our accommodation opportunities for the night, some of our group decided to join other occupiers who were occupying Lake Michigan’s beach, some headed off to meet with friends, and the rest followed representatives from Occupy Chicago, who had kindly greeted us with an offer of breakfast, which would be served was soon as their Convergence Center opened at 8.30 AM.

With photos to edit and upload, and words such as these to file, I headed to a motel room which was serving as 99% Solidarity’s temporary base. Having been starved of a reliable internet connection for the past two days, there was much to catch up on, and very little time, since the march leading up to the NNU organized People’s G8 / Robin Hood Tax Rally was scheduled to star at 11 AM.

Following a shower, and a frenzy of emails, uploads, and social media posts, I grabbed a much-needed Starbucks, a liquid breakfast/boost being all I had time for. (Unfortunately, sometimes, corporate crack is unavoidable – and this was one of those occasions!) I met up with a core group of occupiers and activists at Michigan and Madison, and headed over to Daley Plaza with them.

As we made our way down East Washington, we admired the barricades which the Chicago Police Department had kindly laid out on either side of the street to make out of town occupiers feel right at home. Given the much-publicized increased police presence, which involved importing officers from several other states, the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed. When a group of CPD officers wearing full-on riot helmets cycled past on bikes, at this juncture, quite frankly the sight was more ridiculous than threatening. But as we closed in on Daley Plaza, the police presence was far less frivolous.

It was heartening to see an impressively large crowd had turned out to support the nurses and their call for a Robin Hood Tax. This overworked and underpaid group are on the frontlines of the war against the working and middle class – the breakdown of the economy being particularly salient to those who staff our emergency rooms. There is therefore a natural affinity between the goals of Occupy and the nurses union, who were among the first of the traditional labor organizations to support the fledgling alternative grassroots activist movement.

Another stalwart supporter of the Occupy movement is Tom Morello, who performed at the rally once the talk was done. He gleefully taunted Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who had attempted to silence the Rage Against the Machine guitarist by pulling the NNU’s permit after they announced he was scheduled to perform. The resulting public outcry, and the tenacity of the nurses who were determined to exercise their right to free speech with or without a permit, having forced Emanuel to relent.

“I know damn well I’m welcome in Chicago” Morello said to the cheering and appreciative crowd. “The mayor’s office tried to shut this whole thing down…How ridiculous for the mayor’s office to think I would do anything to hurt Chicago? Chicago is my favorite city on the whole world.”

After Morello’s perfectly pitched mix of rhetoric and rebel songs, the rally dissipated. The nurses took to their buses, occupiers took to the streets, and, after another burst of essential online activity, this activist/journalist voted for sleep.

Visit our gallery at SuicideGirls.com for oodles more images from the event.

To keep tabs on the progress of the Chicago bus trip and actions, subscribe to the 99% Solidarity media Twitter list and check in with us via the following livestreams:

Full disclosure: Nicole Powers has been assisting with 99% Solidarity’s efforts and is in no way an impartial observer. She is proud of this fact.

Related Posts:

99Solidarity Occu-Bus: Day 1 Of Our Epic Coast-To-Coast Road Trip From Los Angeles To New York By Way Of Chicago
99Solidarity Occu-Bus: Day 2 Of Our Epic Coast-To-Coast Road Trip From Los Angeles To New York By Way Of Chicago

by Nicole Powers

Day 2 of our epic journey was very flat, but literally, rather than metaphorically. Having made it through Denver’s Rocky Mountains under the cover of darkness while most on the bus were asleep, we woke up to a spectacular sunrise as we sped across the border into Nebraska. There the terrain was level, very level, as were heads on our designated LA media bus.

California Dream Stream Team member, OccupyFreedomLA conducted classes aboard the bus on livestreaming and social media. A veteran occupier, she also made sure everyone knew the local Chicago National Lawyers Guild number and also read out a briefing she’d been given on the Chicago Police Department’s provisions for press over the long weekend. The CPD “Ground Rules For Media” included these ‘highlights’:

No “cutting” in and out of police lines will be permitted, or “going up against their backs.” Those who follow protesters onto private property to document their actions are also will be subject to arrest if laws are broken. Any member of the media who is arrested will have to go through the same booking process as anyone else. Release of equipment depends on what part the equipment played in the events that led to the arrest…

There will not be any quick personal recognizance bond just for media members…

But police emphasized that those who choose to walk amid the protesters are “on your own.” The department cannot guarantee the safety of those who do so and cannot guaranteed that they can extract any reporter who ends up the target of protesters.

That last line about reporters becoming targets of protesters was particularly inflammatory, and received the appropriate derisive response from our 99% Solidarity media crew, who though not impartial, were there to accurately report the news rather than make it with acts of violence. Indeed, everyone on board all of the 99% Solidarity buses had signed a non-violence pledge confirming their peaceful intentions, which was a pre-requisite for boarding.

Talking of peaceful, positive and progressive intentions, after members participated in one of the weekly Media Consortium Inter-Occupy press briefing calls, we had some great conversations on the direction of the movement over the course of the day – and some even greater ones with our bus drivers’ who shared their thoughts on Occupy, which were all very constructive if not entirely supportive. Of the three drivers we’d had (who’d operated in shifts due to the length of our trip), somewhat surprisingly given his former occupation, it was our last driver who turned out to be our biggest champion. Though a former Marine, he shared many of our anti-NATO sentiments, expressing a frustration at our government’s overseas policy and treatment of veterans, which was naturally tempered by his loyalty to his fellow servicemen.

When the conversation died down, the documentaries Casino Jack and The United States of Money, about corrupt lobbyist (is there any other kind?) Jack Abramoff, and Exit Through the Gift Shop, about street artist Banksy and his accidental protégé Mr. Brainwash, kept our group entertained. The standard revolution diet of pizza, again, kept them sustained.

As we drove into Iowa, we were confronted by another spectacular sunset. Our livestreamers, who by now had their own designated hashtag #CaliDST, were getting quite competitive when capturing these.

A minor medical emergency delayed us for an hour just before crossing the Illinois state border. As we headed into Chicago almost 50 hours after our journey had begun, those on the bus let out a collective cheer as we spied the spectacular skyline. Another sunrise, this time over the waters of Lake Michigan, greeted us as we drove into the heart of the city.

Our buses stopped at Lakeshore & Belmont, just a few blocks away from Occupy Chicago’s Convergence Center. Local Occupy members kindly met us with promises of a much-needed breakfast as soon as the staging area opened at 8.30 AM that day. Most on the bus decided to take them up on their offer, not wanting to make history on an empty stomach. Indeed news of the protesters arrival in the Windy City in a fleet of 14 99% Solidarity/NNU buses had already found its way into the mainstream media, with a photo of the first of four from NYC taking up most of the Chicago Sun-Times front page!

To keep tabs on the progress of the Chicago bus trip and actions, subscribe to the 99% Solidarity media Twitter list and check in with us via the following livestreams:

Full disclosure: Nicole Powers has been assisting with 99% Solidarity’s efforts and is in no way an impartial observer. She is proud of this fact.

Related Posts:

99Solidarity Bus Trip: Day 1 Of Our Epic Coast-To-Coast Road Trip From Los Angeles To New York By Way Of Chicago

by Steven-Elliot Altman (SG Member: Steven_Altman)

Our Fiction Friday serialized novel, The Killswitch Review, is a futuristic murder mystery with killer sociopolitical commentary (and some of the best sex scenes we’ve ever read!). Written by bestselling sci-fi author Steven-Elliot Altman (with Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse), it offers a terrifying postmodern vision in the tradition of Blade Runner and Brave New World…

By the year 2156, stem cell therapy has triumphed over aging and disease, extending the human lifespan indefinitely. But only for those who have achieved Conscientious Citizen Status. To combat overpopulation, the U.S. has sealed its borders, instituted compulsory contraception and a strict one child per couple policy for those who are permitted to breed, and made technology-assisted suicide readily available. But in a world where the old can remain vital forever, America’s youth have little hope of prosperity.

Jason Haggerty is an investigator for Black Buttons Inc, the government agency responsible for dispensing personal handheld Kevorkian devices, which afford the only legal form of suicide. An armed “Killswitch” monitors and records a citizen’s final moments — up to the point where they press a button and peacefully die. Post-press review agents — “button collectors” — are dispatched to review and judge these final recordings to rule out foul play.

When three teens stage an illegal public suicide, Haggerty suspects their deaths may have been murders. Now his race is on to uncover proof and prevent a nationwide epidemic of copycat suicides. Trouble is, for the first time in history, an entire generation might just decide they’re better off dead.

(Catch up with the previous installments of Killswitch – see links below – then continue reading after the jump…)

[..]

by Daniel Robert Epstein

In the movies Tilda Swinton comes off very angel-like and that’’s not a pun for Hellblazer fans. She seems very delicate with a strong touch of pathos, though in person she’’s warm, sweet, very funny and all business. But I suppose when an actor has sheparded a passion project for five years like Swinton did with Thumbsucker you need to be that way sometimes.

Swinton plays Audrey Cobb, a woman with two children. At the age of 17 her son, Justin, still sucks his thumb. She wonders how she could possibly be grownup with a son going to college. In her early 40s, she is, like Justin, struggling to find out who she is and to accept her shortcomings. As a mother she knows that she doesn’t have all the answers to Justin’s troubles, and that she is sometimes too busy dealing with her own doubts to help him. Audrey hides from these realities through an obsession with a TV heartthrob, Matt Schraam [Benjamin Bratt], whose TV character seems to have all the neat answers.

Read our exclusive interview with Tilda Swinton on SuicideGirls.com.

Spliff Suicide in Djarum Black

• INTO: Aggressive rollerblading, smoking ganja.
• NOT INTO: Drama.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: My friends, all breeds of dogs (yes even the hairless ones =P), NYC, dancing all night long.
• MAKES ME SAD: Loosing friends, waiting in the hot subway for more then 15 mins for a train.
• HOBBIES: Aggressive rollerblading, fire poi, biking.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: My phone, my friends, my glasses, ganja, Indian food.
• VICES: Mary Jane.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Outside enjoying this beautiful life. I love to frolic through NYC and Brooklyn as much as possible.

Get to know Spliff better over at SuicideGirls.com!

by Nicole Powers

In the early hours of Wednesday, May 17, SuicideGirls embarked on an epic cross-country journey in solidarity with Occupy and the 99%. Our “occucation” adventure started out at the current home of OccupyLA, in Downtown’s Pershing Square, where we climbed aboard one of a fleet of three buses organized by Occupy affinity group 99% Solidarity and funded by National Nurses United. The buses are taking occupiers – for free – from Los Angeles to Chicago to participate in the various protests, rallies, and gatherings that are planned there to coincide with the NATO and G8 summits.

The Los Angeles to Chicago bus trip is part of a nationwide effort that will be the largest collaboration between the Occupy and union movements to date. Over the next couple of days a total of 14 buses from 8 cities will converge, bringing approximately 700 occupiers to Chi-Town.

The organizers hope the bridge-building project will unite protesters and union members, who may have different philosophies but ultimately share common goals. They also hope the mass turnout expected over the course of the long weekend will send a strong message to the 1% and those that are supposed to represent ALL of us, that Occupy, despite losing most of its physical encampments, has not lost its way, and is a force to be reckoned with as the American Spring heats up.

Though the buses were scheduled to set off from Pershing Square at 4 AM, our departure was delayed by two hours to accommodate a contingent who had traveled by Greyhound from Oakland and San Francisco to join us. Once our NoCal comrades arrived, our three buses set out together in convoy.

As we headed up the I15 towards Vegas, the extended incline and the ambient desert temperature took its toll on the first bus in our fleet, which was forced to take a 15 minute ‘time out’ to cool down. This resulted in a very welcome – if unscheduled – refreshment, toilet and smoke break as we waited at a rest area for the ailing bus to catch up. It also provided an unexpected press opportunity, as our stop off and journey through Nevada made the Chicago ABC 7 News.

Our bus, which was at the rear of the convoy, was the designated media bus. It carried livestreamers OccupyFreedomLA, CrossXBones, TRWBS and CodeFrameSF (who was fresh from Occupy The Farm), and a group of passengers who had consented to be filmed 24/7. Those with cameras were dubbed the California Dream Stream Team, and the super-stream-lined vehicle, the Occupy Real World bus.

As we trucked on through Nevada via Arizona to Utah, most of the group took the opportunity to catch up on some Zzzs, our mass cat nap being roused by another minor case of over-heated engine syndrome and a second unscheduled stop. Once back aboard the bus, we watched Kristin Canty’s excellent pro-raw milk / real food documentary Farmageddon. A third necessary stop – this time planned – for a driver exchange, also served as a pizza-grazing opportunity (the highly deliverable dish being the standard issue hot-ish dining option for the revolution).

As we continued our journey along the I70 towards Salt Lake City, the sun began to set behind the rocky hills providing a stunning photo op for the media bus’ highly independent press corp. It made a nice change for the flurry of shutter clicks to be prompted by something of beauty, rather than a case of all too frequent police brutality.

Attention shifted from the stunning view however, when equally stunning news came in that the sun was setting on the most offensive provisions of the NDAA. As CodeFrameSF read a just-in Federal Court ruling, in which a the judge agreed that the unlimited detention without due process allowed by the extremely vague and open to interpretation wording of the NDAA was onerous and ultimately curtailed free speech, a spontaneous cheer erupted aboard the bus. This victory was not only one for reason – and our Bill of Rights – but one for Occupy, since one of the seven co-defendants in the case was Occupy London founder Kai Wargalla (see previous story).

Though the road trip at times has been grueling, news that true justice had prevailed in what had seemingly been a long-shot David vs. Goliath case raised spirits. Let’s hope our trip to Chicago continues to be a cause for celebration rather than confrontation, as the 99Solidarity road trip spreads a message of unity and continues its mission to inspire a critical mass to motivate positive change by way of peaceful protest. After all, as the Occupy saying goes, the people, united, can never be defeated – and we weren’t today!

To keep tabs on the progress of the Chicago bus trip and actions, subscribe to the 99% Solidarity media Twitter list and check in with us via the following livestreams:

Full disclosure: Nicole Powers has been assisting with 99% Solidarity’s efforts and is in no way an impartial observer. She is proud of this fact.

by A.J. Focht

In its second week in theatres, The Avengers broke over a dozen records, including tying with Avatar and Deathly Hallows Part 2 for fastest to a billion dollars. Considering in just two weeks it became the twelfth highest grossing movie ever, it should be no surprise that Disney has confirmed Avengers 2.

After the phenomenal success of The Avengers, Joss Whedon took some time to thank his longtime fans. Posting a letter on his personal site, Whedon thanked those that have stuck with him. After his heartfelt missive, he posted an interview with ‘Rutherford D. Actualperson’ covering some FAQ for his fans.

The Amazing Spider-Man is kicking up its advertising campaign. Now they have released a four minute preview of the film. It includes a scene where Spider-Man saves a child, but reveals his identity. Moments like this show the clear differences between this Spider-Man and the Spider-Man from the previous movies.

The newest news from The Dark Knight Rises is that Marion Cotillard has confirmed she is not playing Talia Al’Ghul. In a recent interview, the actress revealed that her character was a good throughout. This does not mean Talia Al’Ghul is not in the movie, but Marion Cotillard will not be playing the part.

The CW is moving forward with their new superhero television series, Arrow. Now there is an official synopsis of Arrow available. Some of it follows the traditional Green Arrow story, but there have been some changes, including the city, which has been switched from Star City to Starling City.

NBC’s Community has been green lit for another season, but they moved the show time to Friday nights. The series might be coming back, but it’s not clear if the whole study group will return. Both Chevy Chase and Community creator Dan Harmon have not signed on for the new season.

Jumping on the post-apocalyptic bandwagon, NBC is airing a new show next season called Revolution. The series follows the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic event where all electricity is shut off across the world. It clearly builds off the popularity of Hunger Games, and even includes a bow toting heroine.

In the video game world, Blizzard launched Diablo III at midnight on the 15th. Videogame developers at Bethesda are also looking to move in on Blizzards massively multiplayer online game territory. They have announced they are working on an Elder Scrolls MMO.