Media and Public Appearances

ONDON (AP) — Paramedics, emergency crews, teachers and even some employees from the prime minister's office took to the streets of Britain for the country's largest strike in decades — drawing attention to government cuts but failing to bring the nation to a standstill.

Public sector employees staged the one-day walkout Wednesday over government demands that they work longer before receiving a pension and pay more in monthly contributions, part of austerity measures to tackle Britain's 967 billion-pound ($1.5 trillion) debt.

The strike came a day after the government announced that public sector pay raises will be limited to 1 percent through 2014 — even as inflation now runs about 5 percent.

In the first 48 hours of the movement to recall Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch, more than 50,000 Wisconsinites signed petitions to force the governor and lieutenant governor to face a new election and the prospect of removal from office.

And that number will multiply. More than 20,000 people have downloaded petitions from United Wisconsin as the group works to gather the required 540,000 signatures, and tens of thousands more signatures have been collected from the more than 30 United Wisconsin offices across the state.

The recall movement is real, and remarkable in its strength and reach.

Walker knows he is in trouble.

We got word just after 1 a.m. Tuesday that New York City Police were raiding the Occupy Wall Street encampment. I raced down with the “Democracy Now!” news team to Zuccotti Park, renamed Liberty Square. Hundreds of riot police had already surrounded the area. As they ripped down the tents, city sanitation workers were throwing the protesters’ belongings into dump trucks. Beyond the barricades, back in the heart of the park, 200-300 people locked arms, refusing to cede the space they had occupied for almost two months. They were being handcuffed and arrested, one by one.

Daily, it seems, we watch as our democracy slips into an increasingly divisive panic attack. Republicans, we’re told, hate Democrats. Democrats, we’re told, hate Republicans. Accountability in our political system seems as tenuous as the economic recovery: Tea Partier, Wall Street Occupier, or none of the above, we all know something's amiss.

Yet as it is, we have a tradition of successful self-governance more than 230 years in the making. Full of beauty, opportunity, and deep scars, our democracy continues as a grand experiment. Rights have been expanded, greater access to the disenfranchised has been afforded, and our democratic institutions endure.

Protests against corporate power in the United States took root in Washington on Thursday, with hundreds of people occupying Freedom Plaza in the city center to demand progressive reform.

The Stop the Machine rally -- midway between the Capitol and the White House -- echoed the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York that Thursday drew more than 5,000 people as well as labor-union support.

"The poor are no longer patient," said one of the speakers, Ben Manski, a Green Party activist from Wisconsin, from a stage decorated with the "We the People" preamble of the US constitution.

After seven, it's this week's Big Question: Do you support or oppose the Occupy Wall Street movement? Joy Cardin gets two answers to that question. Guests:

- Ben Manski, Executive Director of Liberty Tree
- Daniel Halper, Deputy Online Editor, The Weekly Standard

Listen in here: http://www.wpr.org/cardin/index.cfm?strDirection=Next&dteShowDate=2011-10-12+06%3A00%3A00.0

Press TV:  Edward Spannaus, why don't you tell us your impression of these movements? I mean, they are obviously gaining momentum. Tell us why? And of course we see Occupy Wall Street as being one of them that has inspired other movements.

 Spannaus: Well, I would actually go back to the spring when you had the mass protests in Madison, Wisconsin, in Indiana, in Ohio and at that time also you had demonstrations in hundreds of cities in support of the trade unionists and when you had governors of those states trying to break the unions.

"Daniel Halper, Weekly Standard & Ben Manski, Liberty Tree Foundation join Thom Hartmann. The" Occupy Wall Street" protests are showing NO signs of letting up! Millions who make up the "99 Percent" are rallying in cities across the nation...but the big show was in New York City - with tens of thousands in the streets. So where does this movement go now? And the corporate media has weighed in the legitimacy of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. And so too have politicians and policymakers. We'll debate what people are saying - coming up."

View the video here: http://youtu.be/cqdyoSpKw0E

NEW YORK - Police reopened the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening after more than 500 anti-Wall Street protesters were arrested for blocking traffic lanes and attempting an unauthorized march across the span.

Protesters react as police begin to make arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge during an Occupy Wall Street march in New York October 1, 2011.  The arrests took place when a large group of marchers, participating in a second week of protests by the Occupy Wall Street movement, broke off from others on the bridge's pedestrian walkway and headed across the Brooklyn-bound lanes.