Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended his decision to clear the park in Lower Manhattan that was the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, saying “health and safety conditions became intolerable” in the park where the protesters had camped out for nearly two months.

Mr. Bloomberg said the city had planned to reopen the park on Tuesday morning after the protesters’ tents and tarps had been removed and the stone steps had been cleaned. …

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It took Los Angeles exactly 15 days to spawn a solidarity protest after New Yorkers began camping out in Zuccotti Park in mid-September. Within a month, Occupy L.A. quadrupled its presence on the grassy lawns surrounding City Hall. Despite complaints about damaged grass and expenditures on police presence, there is no end in sight to Occupy L.A. A sea of hundreds of colorful tents has transformed downtown Los Angeles into a local epicenter of the …

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“It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.” — Theodore Roosevelt …

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The Occupy Oakland encampment was dismantled by police today with officers in riot gear arresting dozens of protestors in a raid beginning early this morning. Occupy Oakland put out a call on its website yesterday for supporters to turn out to swell its numbers in anticipation of the police. The AP reports the Oakland PD did not employ the violent …

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A Florida challenge to President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is headed to the Supreme Court – an announcement is expected this week. It is the strongest of the more than two dozen legal challenges facing the President’s signature healthcare bill over the year and a half since it was signed into law. Despite the plethora of lawsuits, …

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We remember the Black Panther Party today as the most potent symbol of organizational militant Black power in the 70s. But few know the emphasis that the party put on healthcare, through its network of free clinics, its fight to end medical discrimination, and its education campaign on genetic diseases that African Americans are more prone to. Now, on the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, that legacy of healthcare activism has been documented in a new book by Alondra Nelson, a Sociology Professor at Columbia University. In her book, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, Nelson tells the story of how the Black Panther Party and its various leaders, placed such a strong emphasis on their community’s access to medical care that they eventually made the demand for free healthcare for all people, an explicit part of their ten-point program.

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A planned one-day strike for November 17th at two California State University campuses looms as labor negotiations stall between the university and the California Faculty Association. CFA members voted overwhelmingly to approve the action with 93% supporting the strike this Thursday at two campuses, Cal State Dominguez Hills in southern California, and Cal State East Bay in the north. The …

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Check out Cinderella Motel, an LA rock band. We featured their song “Clearance Valentine” today on Uprising.

More about Cinderella Hotel at www.cinderellamotel.net

If you know of an If you know of an independent musical act you’d like to see featured on Uprising, send an email to mail@uprisingradio.org.

Uprising’s Music Curator is Chris Bennett …

We’ll speak with Colorlines.com publisher Rinku Sen about the Occupy Wall Street movement and race. And, Alondra Nelson joins us in studio to discuss her new book, “Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.” Plus, the California Faculty Association votes to strike – we’ll get a special report. …

“I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that …

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