Jason Cherkis' and Sara Kenigsberg's latest entry in the 'Occupy Y'All Street' series that examines some of the lesser-known Occupy encampments is maybe the most important thing they've posted yet. It asks the question of what happens when the initial enthusiasm of the protests starts to wane. It asks, what happens next.

The article focuses on Occupy Charlotte member Vic Suter, a key organizer who has dedicated her life to the issues related to Occupy Wall Street and is going above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to making sure that Charlotte is occupied and that the rallies and marches in the city don't die.

A month earlier, the Occupy activists in Charlotte had drawn more than 500 to their first march uptown, a noisy success that included a stop at Bank of America's North Tryon Street headquarters, where the throngs chanted up its 60 stories. The building -- the tallest in the state and a dominant spear in the city's skyline -- had been a force for civic pride. But since the Great Recession, the bank has become one of the country's great villains. The Wall Street of the South now had its own potent occupation.

The early general assemblies could number in the hundreds. The meeting participants were drawn by growing income disparities, rising college tuition costs, the region's environmental decay. They were among the metro area's double-digit unemployment rate. They realized they were everybody.

Vic had joined on the first night and had been charged with welcoming newcomers and teaching them the movement's hand signals. Soon she began organizing three marches each day to one spot. This was her work week. Charlotte's downtown had grown rich with examples of injustice wrapped in glass and outfitted with bad public art. Vic filled up to-do lists with ideas for future marches.

For years, she had searched for her place. She tattooed "Restless" in black cursive script on her shoulder. But at Occupy, she thought she might have found her calling, and her very own tribe in the buckle of the bible belt. She fell hard. "When you're throwing yourself into something," she explained to us, "you don't have a lunch break. You don't have time off. You don't get a vacation from a long-term protest."

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Our favorite Arizona Nazi border watcher, J.T. Ready, recently reached new opportunistic depths by showing up and pretending to support Occupy Phoenix -- even though he was apparently confronted by other participants, who made it clear he wasn't welcome.

Let's be clear: J.T. Ready is a neo-Nazi, a classic totalitarian/authoritarian, someone who despises and loathes and sneers at the kind of democracy-in-action that the Occupy movement represents. He likes chaos, though, and he sees the movement's unsettling effect as something he can use. And showing up at protests always is good for a little attention. That's why he did this.

Predictably, as Matt Gertz at Media Matters reports, the same right-wing bloggers who have been trying to smear the Occupiers as anti-Semites picked this up and ran with it:

For some time, the right-wing media has been attempting to brand Occupy Wall Street and related protests as anti-Semitic. In the latest example, conservative blogger Jim Hoft is pointing to video of heavily armed Neo-Nazi J.T. Ready patrolling the Occupy Phoenix protest and saying nice things about the movement.

Hoft sarcastically concludes, "Yup. They're just like the tea party."

It's worth pointing out that much of the rhetoric Ready spouts during the video -- decrying fiat money, saying that he and others were "exercising our Second Amendment right so that everybody can have a First Amendment right," claiming that Operation Fast and Furious was intended to "take away our rights" and the perpetrators are traitors who should be put to death -- sounds much more like the rhetoric of a conservative protestor than an OWS supporter.

And indeed, that's the problem for Hoft: Ready previously attended and reportedly spoke at Tea Party rallies ...

Gertz then details all the times Ready has appeared in support of tea party events.

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Occupy Portland makes a video about C&L's Solidarity Pizzas funder called #occupies. Pizza-a-go-go supported the cause by giving us discounted pricing. We're finding many small business are doing the same.

We just sent another twenty pizzas to NY last night and are expanding the fundraiser to include many other supplies and services that are desperately needed so please donate if you can to keep this movement strong. Thanks for all your support. You guys rock and roll. I have another announcement coming up soon which I'm very excited about.

The Solidarity Pizzas are a form of support that has really helped to lift the spirits of all those people that are rising up from city to city and taking to the streets to stand up against Wall Street's greed which has led to an unconscionable income inequality throughout America.

Thanks so much for standing strong with the 99 Percenters.

Now before some people start jumping up and down and yelling, "Straw man, straw man! Nobody believes it's okay to do that," let me present you with this delightful post written by ex-Goldman employee Matt Levine. Here is the actual title of the piece:

So Maybe Citi Created A Mortgage-Backed Security Filled With Loans They Knew Were Going To Fail So That They Could Sell It To A Client Who Wasn’t Aware That They Sabotaged It By Intentionally Picking The Misleadingly Rated Loans Most Likely To Be Defaulted Upon, So What?

Yeah, so what? It was just fraud! What kind of loser is opposed to fraud?

Levine's post is largely an attempt to counter arguments that it's wrong to screw people over in the name of making money. Most of his points rely on the tried and true "sophisticated investor" defense, which is basically akin to that scene in "Animal House" where the guys from Delta House have just destroyed Flounder's car and Otter tries to console him by saying, "Hey, you f***ed up! You trusted us!" In other words, it's your fault that you got the shaft since you should have known we were going to shaft you. Take a look:

There are five points to which your free-floating rage could maybe attach:

1. You were shorting a thing that you were selling to your customers! This is what drove Congress bonkers. But that’s what selling is. If you have 20 apples and sell me 15, you now have fewer apples, and I have more. If apple prices decline, I am worse off, and you are relatively protected. Banks, which are always long some risks and short some others, don’t see zero as a particularly interesting point on this continuum – if you have 20 apples and sell me 30, and apple prices decline, you make money, but that’s different only in degree, not in kind, from selling me 15 and reducing your risk to 5.

The apple analogy is sorta funky since most normal human beings buy apples to, uh, eat them instead of using them as long-term investment strategies. But let's roll with it! Let's say Matt sells me a crate of apples that he thinks is overvalued and that I think I can sell at a profit. I understand that there are certain risks in such transactions: The apples might have worms in them. There might be a surplus crop of apples that will diminish my selling power. Or people might just decide apples suck and not want to buy them. These are all risks I'm willing to assume when I buy apples from Matt.

But what I'm not willing to assume when I buy apples from Matt is that he might have personally embedded hand grenades in 80% of them that will blow up my truck when I try to drive them off the lot. Because that's pretty much what Citi's bad apples did to the people on the other side of the trade:

After the deal closed on Feb. 28, 2007, more than 80 percent of the portfolio was downgraded by credit ratings agencies in less than nine months. The security declared “an event of default” on Nov. 19, 2007, and investors soon lost hundreds of millions of dollars, the S.E.C. said, while Citigroup gained.

Among the losers was Ambac of New York, which insured financial instruments and was the largest investor in the deal, according to the S.E.C. Ambac’s role in the transaction was to assume the credit risk associated with a $500 million portion of the portfolio. When the value of the portfolio fell, Ambac had to make payments to those who had bet against the bonds, as Citigroup had.

In part because of losses tied to the financial crisis, Ambac filed for bankruptcy last year.

Neener, neener, neener, Ambac! How do you like them $500 million apples, losers?

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Eric Bolling has been trying to fill Glenn Beck's shows ever since the announcement that the rodeo clown was being booted off of his Fox show. For as much as the Fox Business reporter tries to be the New Wingnut King, he'll never come close to the Vicks Vapor Rub phony. Bob Beckel, one of the hand full of "liberals" on Fox, smacked him down by simply telling the truth.

"On your show, all you did was run about the tea party"

Fox News created the tea party phenomena, but now they've served their purpose and Roger Ailes has been basically shedding them since the midterms. They aren't finished as a group yet, far from it. But the presidential election is in high gear, so they needed to be put in the basement as much as possible since their extremism won't sell in a general election and Ailes is wise enough to understand that.

He'll bring them out again if Romney, Cain or Perry start to slide in the polling, because he'll go to any lengths to win. A real populist movement terrifies the likes of Roger Ailes and Eric Bolling. Doug Schoen played his role for a nice paycheck and should be ashamed of himself. Congratulations.

This is the kind of face-saving B.S. finding you'd expect from the NYPD. This wasn't a minor policy violation, this was out-and-out brutality. Hopefully, the victims will have better luck in civil court:

NEW YORK (AP) — An internal New York Police Department review has found an official violated department guidelines when he used pepper spray on Occupy Wall Street protesters last month, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Tuesday.

Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna faces discipline of a loss of 10 vacation days after the Sept. 24 incident near Union Square, shortly after the now-global protests began in a tiny private plaza in lower Manhattan, the person said. The person had direct knowledge of the review but was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

[...] Bologna, who works in Manhattan South, has the option to appeal the decision. His union said Bologna's actions were motivated by his concern for the safety of officers under his command and the safety of the public.

"Deputy Inspector Bologna is disappointed at the results of the department investigation," said Roy Richter, president of the NYPD captain's endowment association. "His actions prevented further injury and escalation of tumultuous conduct. To date, this conduct has not been portrayed in its true context."

A lawyer for one of the women, 24-year-old Kaylee Dedrick, said Bologna had assaulted her and he should be arrested.

"The crux of Deputy Inspector Bologna's offense is not that he mishandled pepper spray or shot off mist in a careless fashion; the crux of Bologna's conduct is he engaged in a deliberate assault against five innocent people," attorney Ron Kuby said.

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Of course, I'm reading this article just as the Twitter informs me that the NYPD is at Liberty Park, trying to take down Occupy Wall Street's medical tent while the Rev. Jesse Jackson tries to stop them. The occupiers are chanting: "Who do you serve? Who do you protect"? Good question!

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, speaking Monday as Occupy Wall Street protesters celebrated the passage of a month encamped in Zuccotti Park, said he was trying to strike a balance between protecting protesters’ right to free speech and the needs of Lower Manhattan residents.

“The Constitution doesn’t protect tents,” he said at a news conference in Queens. “It protects speech and assembly.”

Hmm. I wonder if it protects umbrellas? Which are, after all, a lot like small, short tents without bottoms.

The mayor expressed concern that those exercising a “right to be silent” might be getting drowned out amid the din of the protests.

“We can’t have a place where only one point of view is allowed,” he said. “There are places where I think it’s appropriate to express yourself, and there are other places that are appropriate to set up Tent City. They don’t necessarily have to be one and the same.”

Might I suggest Pier 57? Or did the class action settlement make you promise not to do that again?

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Why Charlie Pierce continues to be my hero:

To call Rep. Eric Cantor a stooge at this point is to insult all three Howard brothers, and the late Mr. Fine, as well.

Ever since the spittle-drenched results of the 2010 midterms swept him into being the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Cantor has demonstrated a remarkable ability to combine complete ignorance of practically every major issue with the unctuous personality of a third-string maitre d' at a fourth-string steakhouse. A couple of weeks ago, confronting the various Scribes and Sadducees that make up the "Values" wing of his party, Cantor was calling the Occupy Wall Street protesters a "mob," and warning the timorous and pharisaical suckers that the tumbrels would be arriving on their streets any day now. Lo and behold, the country seems now to disagree with him, and, on Fox News Sunday, Cantor announced his earthshaking discovery that the United States has a problem with income inequality, and that his Republican party is poised to do something about that. Of course, every single proposal to emerge from his caucus would work to use the tax code to cement that inequality from now until Eric Cantor VIII is flunking economics somewhere.

True, Cantor's argument is that the Republican plan would allow all the poor people in America to rise to become the owners of their own hedge funds, and is utterly insincere, where it is not complete bullshit. But the fact that the words "income disparity" were spoken by a member of the congressional Republican leadership, in public and without his tongue turning to fire, is proof that the elite pundits are right. The OWS crowd never will affect the country's politics until it develops a "coherent public message." Pity.

As #OWS turns one month old and continues to spread all over this country and around the globe, just wanted to pass on a quick note about austerity’s crushing effects in Britain. Remember, just couple of months ago London was burning as a result of “toxic mix” of social deprivation, unemployment and austerity.

New economic figures released last week showed David Cameron’s Britain remains “stuck in a vicious cycle of low growth, high unemployment and fiscal austerity”:

New figures released this week reported Britain’s highest jobless numbers in more than 15 years. Independent analysts expect unemployment — now 8.1 percent — to keep rising in the months ahead. The government has kept its promise to slash public-sector jobs — more than 100,000 have been lost in recent months. But its deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to spur private-sector hiring.

Drastic public spending cuts were the wrong deficit-reduction strategy for the weakened British economy a year ago. And they are the wrong strategy for the faltering American economy today. Britain’s unhappy experience is further evidence that radical reductions in federal spending will do little but stifle economic recovery.

A few years of robust growth would go far toward making swollen federal deficits more manageable. But slashing government spending in an already stalled economy weakens anemic demand, leading to lost output and lost tax revenues. As revenues fall, deficit reduction requires longer, deeper spending cuts. Cut too far, too fast, and the result is not a balanced budget but a lost decade of no growth. That could now happen in Britain. And if the Republicans have their way, it could also happen here.

Well, it’s not the just the Republicans standing in the way. The question is whether the Democrats will mount a credible counter policy offensive, ripping apart Washington’s bipartisan fetish with austerity,? As the NYT rightly points out, austerity is nothing more than “a political ideology masquerading as an economic policy.”

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On Up with Chris Hayes, he showed a video that truly must be seen to be believed. After a Occupy Wall Street solidarity march in Santa Cruz, California, protesters decided to put their money where their mouths were literally, and close their personal accounts at the local branch of Bank of America. You know, the bank that received $138 billion in bailout funds, paid no federal taxes, claimed a $3 billion profit in 2010 and awarded its CEO a $9.05 million bonus but is hard up enough for cash that they now *must* charge anyone with an account below $6,000 a $5/month charge for the privilege of having an ATM card. But holding a sign reading "I AM CLOSING MY BOA ACCOUNT TODAY" is enough to dictate that a person -- despite having money deposited with the bank -- is not a customer and cannot be allowed to close the account.

The bank manager actually said that: You cannot be a protester and a customer at the same time. She then locked in the protesters and threatened to call the police.

This goes hand in hand with the video, also from this weekend, of a Citibank customer in New York arrested for attempting to close her account. She was accused of being disruptive in the bank, but as you can see from the video (and really, isn't it about time that the Power That Be figure out that we all have video capabilities on our phones and their say-so won't fly in the face of digital evidence?), the woman was manhandled and arrested on the public street.

It is now apparently illegal to want to have possession of your own money if you disagree with banking companies.

As Sam Seder points out, they can arrest us, they can fight us, but the movement is growing. Occupy the Boardroom is an online action we can all participate in. Here is a letter that a C&L fan wrote (reprinted with permission):

My parents, Randal Duane and Frances Marie, have worked hard their entire lives to care for my brother and I and to build a life. They own a modest house and two modest cars and have a minor savings account that they had hoped to grow a little more now that they are in their mid-fifties.

Frances lost her job over two years ago in customer service at a national carpet manufacturer because of cut backs related to the depressed housing market.

Randal lost his job a year ago as a manager of an branch of a company that provided temporary workers for construction and local city and county government.

They made modest salaries and never benefited from the boom times. They literally saved their pennies to pay off their home and their cars early and to help my grandmother pay for her medications.

Now they spend nearly $2000 a month out of their 30-year-old Bank of America accounts to maintain their COBRA insurance. The savings they worked for over 40 years falls away moment by moment. They seek out cheaper and cheaper foods, clean their devalued home over and over as "entertainment" because they can't afford the gas to go anywhere.

My father is applying for progressively more degrading jobs in the hopes of keeping at least their current austere life. So far he's been virtually ignored because the few available jobs (even at the lowest level) are being given to the younger and equally overqualified applicants.

My parents paid for your inflated salaries, they paid for your speculation, they paid for your bail out, and now they are paying for you to sit on a trillion dollars with their short future. A future that they sweated and saved for now looks like it will be a series of cheap bulk hamburger meat dinners, punctuated by window washing and heat waves with no air conditioning.

They are the 99% I protest for.

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