It is election night in Madison, Wis., and I am standing where it all began, in front of the state Capitol here in the heart of America’s rebel dairyland. Earlier today was the recall election against Gov. Scott Walker, the viciously right-wing governor whose legislative attacks on public workers and…

Over the last few months, I have been an active, critical, yet ultimately proud member of Occupy Oakland. Despite the sometimes-questionable tactics and lack of much diversity in this working-class, multi-racial city, I believed that Occupy Oakland was still a young movement and would mature into a more solid political…

In all my years of marches and demonstrations, I had never been on a picket line at 3 a.m. Yet here I was on this oh-so-early Tuesday morning, out on a quiet street on Oakland’s waterfront alongside hundreds of my fellow Occupy activists. All of us were cold, tired —…