“If the mayor of our country’s largest city thinks protecting the press means silencing them, we’re in big trouble,” wrote Free Press Program Director Josh Stearns at the organization’s website. Stearns has been tracking harassment and arrests of journalists covering the Occupy movement for the last two months.

From the Free Press campaign web page:

In what appears to have been a coordinated effort to block coverage of the raid, many journalists said they were barred from reporting the police action. Ten reporters were also arrested, another was put in a choke hold and others described extensive police harassment.

This kind of police response is happening all over the country. Police harassment of the press has been reported during “Occupy” protests in Chicago, Denver, Oakland, Portland and beyond.

We need to send the message loud and clear to mayors across the country: They must drop all charges and publicly commit to protecting press freedoms in their cities. This is especially true for Mayor Bloomberg, who took full responsibility for the NYPD’s actions.

Speak out now: Tell Mayor Bloomberg and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to publicly commit to protecting journalists covering all protests and police actions. You can also call Mayor Bloomberg at 212-639-9675 to speak out against the most recent arrests of journalists.

Free Press launched a similar campaign after police attacks on members of the press during the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities in 2008. The Free Press petition then garnered tens of thousands of signatures within days. Journalists were released from custody and some of them eventually received settlements.

Occupy Detroit spokesperson Lee Gaddis said the group plans to pack up the Grand Circus Park encampment and move into donated space where it will be able to focus on political work.

“The weather is really crummy … and going to get crummier,” Gaddis said. “Our primary concern is the safety of the occupiers. Not everybody is prepared to do winter camping.”

The groups permit for camping in the park expires today, and occupiers are ready to move one, though they will stick around long enough to fulfill their promise to clean up the park completely, Gadis said.

Unlike the occupations in Oakland, and elsewhere, Occupy Detroit has enjoyed consistently positive relations with law enforcement.

“We have good relationships with the Detroit police and the Dept. of Homeland Security, nobody from Occupy Detroit has been brutalized or harassed by police,” Gaddis said. “Police here have more important things to do than harassing people for exercising their constitutional rights.”

Top stories image via Flickr/Joseph Stevenson.

Source: A still of Sen. Amy Klobuchar from the ad.

On its website, Demand Progress, a progressive group, says they have one goal for the ad: “We need to embarrass a key lawmaker to set an example for others, and make it clear that it’s not okay to shill for the entertainment industry.”

The ad targets the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, which would “makes unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony with a possible penalty of up to 5 years in prison,” according to Open Congress.

The ad is named “Bieber is Right” in reference to teen pop star Justin Bieber’s comments criticizing Klobuchar for the bill. It asks: “Why is Sen. Klobuchar’s top legislative priority an internet censorship bill that would risk putting ordinary internet users and even Justin Bieber behind bars?”

It’s also paid for by Fight for the Future, a technology rights group, and contains much footage from Occupy Wall Street rallies in Minnesota. Many other groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, have opposed the legislation.

The act is supported by a host of entertainment and media companies, many of which gave generously to Democratic candidates, according to Open Congress.

This week the Occupy Atlanta protesters found a way to protest economic injustice that may build allies within the local law enforcement community.

On Monday about two dozen activists with the group moved their tents to the suburban lawn of a home where a local policeman and his family are facing eviction.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the group mobilized after learning that the five-member family may lose their home because the bank that holds their mortgage has decided to foreclose rather than allow them to refinance.

“This family is the perfect example of the fraud going on in the mortgage and banking industries,” said Latron Price, one of Occupy Atlanta’s organizers. “We plan to shed light on the foreclosure issue and we look to make a stand here.” …

Tim Franzen, one of Occupy Atlanta’s organizers, said the group had been seeking a good story to highlight the problems with the mortgage industry. He said Rorey’s husband, a law enforcement officer with DeKalb County, sent Occupy Atlanta an e-mail detailing their plight last week and within a few hours they formulated a plan to bring attention to the foreclosure.

“What I envision is a model of protest coming out of this,” Franzen said. “We plan to develop an occupy community in this neighborhood and maybe create something that can be duplicated nationally.”

Police officers have been pitted against Occupy Wall St. activists in many cities where they have been ordered to enforce rules against camping in public spaces, and in some well-publicized instances they have used force against demonstrators.

By working together to illustrate the problems of the mortgage industry Occupy Atlanta and the Rorey family may help build goodwill and common ground.

The complaint about the sandwich shop stems from a March incident where six supporters of the International Workers of the World (IWW) were fired after protesting the company’s lack of paid sick leave.

Among the findings against Jimmy John’s in the complaint: “Disparaging and threatening pro-union employees on Facebook, removing union postings from stores, interrogating employees about their union activities, and threatening mass firings for union organizing.”

Micah Buckley-Farlee of the Twin Cities branch of the IWW is one of the six fired workers.

“We’re looking forward to continue fighting for paid sick days, which is the starting point that led to the whole thing they fired us for,” Buckley-Farlee told the Minnesota Independent. “So I’m looking forward to getting back to my job and organizing around paid sick days.”

Unless there is a settlement between the company and the union, an administrative judge will hear the case in mid-January 2012.

Union supporters said they’re willing to consider a settlement if Jimmy John’s reinstates workers and pays back pay. The Minneapolis franchises, which are owned by MikLin Enterprises and headed by Michael Mulligan, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, haven’t returned a request for comment (this post will be updated if we find out more).

This isn’t the company’s first brush with labor law violations. In January 2011, the National Labor Relations Board overturned the previous union election, which the union lost by two votes, due to unfair labor practices by the company. At the time, the company and union reached an agreement that Jimmy John’s would not take action against workers supporting the union.

Buckley-Farlee said the union is keeping the possibility of an election on the table, but that the union is currently more dedicated to grassroots organizing.

Members of Occupy Grand Rapids are planning to spend Friday protesting state plans to privatize careworker positions at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans.

In a Facebook post the group says that it will gather from 4:00 – 7:00 pm at the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans on 3000 Monroe Avenue Northeast.

Lets stand up on Veterans Day. Lets stand up for our vets who deserve the best care we can offer. Lets stand up and say we will not be held hostage by these profits before people policies. Tell Snyder that we will not stand for experienced, hard working, public health care employees being replaced by inexperienced and underpaid workers. Caring for our vets is such an important job that it should be compensated with benefits and a fair living wage.

The Grand Rapids Press reports the state is trying to privatize 170 unionized caregiver postions at the facility, which is one of only two in the state for veterans.

A five-year contract worth nearly $6.6 million has been awarded to Grand Rapids-based J2S Group HealthForce. State officials have argued the move will save more than $4.2 million, an estimate union leaders dispute because of turnover, training and other costs.

A resident of the Grand Rapids home has sued to stop the privatization and an Ingham County judge issued a temporary restraining order against the shift. State leaders are challenging that court ruling.

“Barack Obama has been one of the protest mobs’ biggest cheerleaders,” writes the campaign’s chief and right-wing political consultant Joe Wierzbicki in a release announcing a new campaign ad. ”The new poll finds that support for the violent Occupy Wall Street mobs has fallen further, and since Barack Obama has been one of the protest mobs’ biggest cheerleaders, it spells trouble for him as well.”

The mainstream media hasn’t spent much time highlighting this vulnerability for Obama, but that is where you come in. We urgently need your help to raise the money to launch our new TV ad campaign that shows how Democrat leaders shamelessly have championed the Occupy Wall Street mobs that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars and created considerable damage in cities across America.

The ad closes with a question: “Are we going to let these mobs and their Democrat champions do this to America, or are we going to fight back?”

Voters still sympathize to a significant degree with the main message of the movement, which centers on the need to address the inarguable fact of expanding inequality in the country tied to the finance industry and corporate America. Although recent polls report dipping popularity for the Occupy movement, they also report greater support for the movement than for the Tea Party, with much greater public sympathy for the movement than for Wall Street and large corporations.

Wierzbicki is a longtime pitchman for Republican Party-associated firm Russo Marsh & Rogers. Wierzbicki’s 2011 Campaign to Defeat Obama PAC shares a Willows, California, PO Box with the Our Country Deserves Better PAC and with TeaPartyExpress.org. All three organizations share the same treasurer, a Kelly Lawler, who was a former staff member at the National Republican Campaign Committee.

As the “OWS as Democratic Party-backed public menace” ads hit the airwaves, a blogger for the Economist underlined how Occupiers might pose a major political problem for Democrats.

“As long as the Occupy movement remains without acknowledged leaders who can credibly distance it from the worst behavior of its least reasonable affiliates, the movement will increasingly come to be defined by its most egregious episodes.”

The blogger points to CBS coverage from clashes in Oakland.

“You see the problem? Who watches CBS News? Older people. Older people who don’t cotton to this sort of shenanigans and who vote in droves.”

The Massachusetts Republican Party recently launched a nearly identical campaign targeting Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as the “matriarch of mayhem.”

“Americans all across this country, they’re not mad because some people are rich, they’re mad because they got ripped off,” Ellison said of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “The fact of the matter is that Americans all over this country are expressing their grievances in the street, but also in the barber shops and coffee shops all across this land.”

Ellison cited recent statistics that show growing income inequality as the very wealthy  have earned more while wages stagnated for workers.

“Over the last 30 years, the average working American has seen their pay stay flat,” Ellison said. “They’ve seen their pay go nowhere. They’re pretty much doing the way they were doing, still struggling.”

Ellison said members of Congress don’t need to try to control Occupy Wall Street.

“What we need to do as members of Congress is step up and do our job: create some jobs, put this economy in order, get some lending back to small businesses, and make this economy really work,” Ellison said. “People need a fair shake and a good job, and that’s not too much to ask in the richest country in the history of the world.”

“President Obama joined with the Occupy Wall Street protestors who believe that the problem we face is capitalism, the free markets and job creators,” Bachmann said in a statement Friday. “It’s not.”

Instead, Bachmann says the problem is “crony capitalism,” which she defined in a speech at Iowa State University earlier this week as “forcefully taking your money for the purpose of paying off a politician’s political friends.”

“The problem is one set of standards for individual Americans and another set of standards for those who make political donations to candidates,” she said. “If we are ever to get out of this ditch, President Obama, the Democrats and Occupy Wall Street need to wake up and stop blaming job creators for the failures created by selfish politicians.”

While Bachmann briefly touches on the issue of campaign finance reform, saying that American and “Occupy Wall Street in particular, needs to wake up and stop blaming job creators for the failures created by selfish politicians who wink at their political donors,” she eventually settles blame for the faltering economy on the corporate tax rate and regulatory burdens.

The tax code “contains loopholes that are exploited by companies large enough to hire an army of lawyers,” she said in Iowa. “The United States remains stuck since 1986 in an out of date high corporate tax rate that sent companies fleeing America for a more competitive tax climate.”

Bachmann’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to the Minnesota Independent’s request for comment on Bachmann’s stance on the Citizens United Supreme Court decision or campaign finance reform (this post will be updated if we do hear back).

Credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new accounts since the end of September, CUNA says, reporting that four out of every five credit unions affiliated with the group report that the increase is due to attempts by big banks to raise fees on customers or Bank Transfer Day, a movement birthed by social media that will take place tomorrow.

Bank Transfer Day organizer Kristen Christian explained the logic behind the movement on the group’s Facebook page.

“I started this because I felt like many of you do. I was tired—tired of the fee increases, tired of not being able to access my money when I need to, tired of them using what little money I have to oppress my brothers & sisters. So I stood up. I’ve been shocked at how many people have stood up alongside me.” Christian wrote. “Me closing my account all on my lonesome wouldn’t have made a difference to these fat cats. But each of you standing up with me…they can’t drown out the noise we’ll make.”

Big banks like Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank have also taken flak for attempting to impose additions fees on customers who use debt cards, although many of the banks have withdrawn their plans due to public outcry.

Credit unions are member-owned and non-profit; they typically have fewer fees than corporate banks. Credit unions across the country, including some in Minnesota, have been offering special promotions and extending hours in preparation for Bank Transfer Day, CUNA said. Minnesota’s Affinity Plus launched the aggressive “ditch your bank” campaign in early October,

“Our struggling economy is not the disease, it’s the symptom,” according to Affinity Plus’ campaign. ”There is mounting evidence to prove that big banks with their profit-at-all-costs agenda are actually making our collective disease worse by systematically making choices that undermine the efforts of regulators and ordinary people like us to make changes and get back to a state of health.”

Occupy Wall Street has also helped cement the focus on banks. In Minnesota, Occupy Wall Street has targeted big banks for a series of demonstrations focused largely on the banks’ role in the foreclosure crisis.