The festivities tonight come on the heels of scores of indiscriminate and brutal arrests by the NYPD last night as hundreds of activists gathered to usher in the one-year anniversary.

Of all the internal controversies Occupy generated, the one over whether the movement should adopt specific demands may have been the most significant. The resistance to raising demands, particularly on the state, is understandable since the notion of demands has become associated with negotiation, legislation and similar “business as usual” that would blunt and even compromise the radical edge of the movement. Anarchist and quasi-anarchist currents have played a role in rousing that reluctance among people who may not be ideological anarchists but who may be receptive to the anarchist message on this issue for a number of reasons but especially because of two kinds of fears.

Earlier this week I gave a presentation at the Anarchist Studies Network conference which was an interesting use of my time. It was my first time talking to a crowd (it looked to be about 15-20 people) via Skype. That was unpleasant. It was also an excuse to put some of my thoughts down about Occupy, now that it is over. Now I share those thoughts with you.

The restaurant workers who were fired and locked out of their store for organizing a union have won after a week of escalating protests outside the Manhattan cafe. Saturday afternoon, the owner declared that he had bowed to the workers demands to reopen the store, rehire all the workers and recognize their newly formed union, an inspiring labor victory at a time when many are attacking the power of unions.

When the local offshoot of Occupy Wall Street began a five-month encampment in Austin, Texas last fall, the Austin police assigned at least three undercover officers to infiltrate the group and gather information on potentially illegal actions. According to the Austin Statesman, court documents and interviews show that the infiltrators “camped with other participants in the movement, marched in rallies and attended strategy meetings.”

My mother's side of the family is Irish and, about a million years ago, I attended St. Patrick's grammar school here in New York City. So, for me, March 17 once meant corned beef and cabbage and a day off from school.

Fast forward: I’ve been a vegan for more than 17 years and I’m not often seen anywhere near a church... unless I’m protesting against it.

Xander is always reaching out to people, so it wasn't surprising to see him talking to police officers outside the Bank of America building on one of the first nights those sidewalks were occupied. In planning for the start of Occupy San Francisco (then known as Occupy Financial District San Francisco), organizers wondered whether the city's new "sit/lie" ordinance would be used against them and if people would be arrested. The sit/lie ordinance in San Francisco makes it illegal to sit or lie on the sidewalks between 7 AM and 11 PM.

The building unveiled August 13th as the Victor Martinez Community Library was part of a Carnegie Foundation endowment of four libraries given to the city of Oakland between 1916 and 1918. Oakland’s librarian at the time, Charles S. Greene, believed that the city’s people would benefit most from libraries placed within their communities.

Since Occupy Wall Street took Zuccotti Park in September 2011, there has been a resurgence of social movement activity in the United States. As momentum has increased, age-old questions over tactics, strategy, and goals have returned to the fore.

A protester belonging to an Occupy Wall Street group in rural Pennsylvania is being charged with felony attempted bank robbery and a terrorism-related charge for holding signs up during a demonstration at a local Wells Fargo branch. David C. Gorczynski, 22, was charged on Tuesday with attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, both felonies, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

This piece reflects on the current strengths and weaknesses of the revolutionary networks that have emerged out of the Decolonize/ Occupy movement in Seattle.  In particular, I critique some of the problems that arise because of lack of organization, and suggest ways we can address these without falling into top-down, authoritarian models of  organization building.  I want to acknowledge that several friends in the movement here have raised some of these points over the past nine months, and in some cases their interventions were dismissed.

While it has been widely written and discussed that Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy movement are at their core, fundamentally anarchist projects, very little has been written from the inside about the experiences of activists and organizers working under the Occupy banner who identify as such. While Occupy tends to operate on core anarchist structures and principles, and many of the initial organizers of OWS were indeed self-identified anarchists, the movement is losing its most experienced and radical elements at a rapid pace and many Occupy encampments and assemblies never had an experienced anarchist core to begin with.

As an activist in Occupy Richmond, I worked alongside activists of all persuasions to bring attention to systemic corruption in the political economy. When I first got involved, most of my fellow occupiers were liberals of some variety. After witnessing the heavy handed tactics of the city, the petty politics that get elevated over pressing systemic problems, many of my friends began to understand the anarchist critique of reformism. As usual, the anarchists’ best ally happened to be one of the representatives of our capitalist system: Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones.

Why doesn't Occupy run candidates?

You can add this misguided query to the growing list, along with: Where are their demands? Why aren't there any leaders? Blah, blah, blah...

On a scorching afternoon recently in Philadelphia's Franklin Square, where Occupy's National Gathering participants had set up a daytime base, small circles of people - from gray-haired peace activists and Code Pink members clutching candy-colored parasols, to crust punks rolling cigarettes in the shade and many more - relaxed in advance of a final evening march. It would be the end of a weeklong summit of assemblies and discussions (with a march here and there for good measure), which brought over 500 hundred Occupy participants together from around the country, but passed without media fanfare.

On Tuesday, the local New York City NBC affiliate ran a story based on an unnamed source leaking information on a murder case, with the following headline, "DNA links Occupy protest scene to 2004 murder." There had been a break in the eight-years-cold investigation of the murder of Sarah Fox in Inwood Hill Park. DNA evidence recovered from her CD player, found near her corpse, matched DNA taken from a chain used to hold open a subway door in the fare strike conducted by wildcat transit union members and Occupy Wall Street activists.