Revolution 99 Updates: Homeland Security “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street” – And then they came for…

Department of Homeland Security Gives Occupy Wall Street the “Rightwing Extremist” Treatment
By Mike Riggs,reason.com – Occupy Wall Street and its sympathizers are livid over a five-page report found in the massive cache of Stratfor emails recently published by Wikileaks. Circulated in October and titled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street,” the DHS report in question is based largely on publicly available information, such as news stories and Twitter feeds. The “ominous” part, writes Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings, is the analysis:

“The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence. While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters. As the primary target of the demonstrations, financial services stands the sector most impacted by the OWS protests. Due to the location of the protests in major metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged.”

The Atlantic Wire’s John Hudson rounded up some liberal reactions to Hastings’ scoop:
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Students rally across California to protest education budget cuts, shut down UC Santa Cruz
AP – SAN FRANCISCO — Students, educators and Occupy Wall Street activists held demonstrations Thursday across California to protest state budget cuts to education, partially shutting down at least one college campus.

Hundreds of students blocked entrances to the University of California, Santa Cruz, and prevented cars and buses from entering the coastal campus, school officials said.

“The campus has been effectively closed to vehicles,” said campus spokesman Jim Burns. “Clearly it’s had an access impact for many students, staff and faculty.”

School administrators had warned the campus about the protest. Many classes were canceled or rescheduled, and administrative offices were not fully staffed, Burns said.

The Santa Cruz blockade was among the demonstrations held on about 30 college campuses across California to protest rising tuition and call on lawmakers to restore funding to higher education. Rallies, marches, teach-ins and walkouts were scheduled to coincide with state budget negotiations, organizers said. More…

A Tale of Two Protests: Shut Down the Corporations in Portland and Tucson
by: Alissa Bohling and Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report – Protesters in Portland, Oregon, and Tucson, Arizona, faced very different weather when they hit the streets yesterday, but they had one thing in common: they were among 70 cities nationwide where Occupy activists and others spoke out against members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose decades-long history of authoring and pushing pro-corporate legislation through the nation’s statehouses has been criticized for strangling political and economic participation across the country.

“ALEC, a registered nonprofit with a board of trustees that reads like a Fortune 500 list, allows 1%ers to push legislation representing corporate interests,” said Dana Balicki of Occupy Wall Street in a statement released before the protests. “This is legislation laundering.”

The national day of protest, known as Shut Down the Corporations or F29, was originally called by Occupy Portland.
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