I wake up to the sound of helicopters. Living in Oakland, the city of beautiful rebellion and tragic violence, I’ve long since learned to recognize the distant buzz of police choppers, but I usually don’t hear it before 8 am. Then I remember: Today is May Day! The revolution is…

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 —…