Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about what would happen if we reach the fiscal cliff (or slope or obstacle course) later this year. Unless Congress acts before January 2, the argument goes, large-scale automatic cuts in government spending will likely trigger a new recession, whether or not Obama is reelected. A handful of programs like Medicaid, Social Security, and SNAP, are exempt from cuts, though Medicare will take a hit. Some of the bigger cuts will be in defense, farm subsidies, and student loan assistance. If all this happens, says the CBO, look for unemployment to rise above 9 percent, and the economy to plunge into deep recession next year.   

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How would sequestration affect state budgets? Check out this infographic from the Pew Research Center to find out. States are where some of the worst pain will be, says Pew’s Jake Grovum, especially in education. Oddly, while big-ticket safety net programs like Social Security and Medicaid are off-limits at the federal level, automatic cuts will slash state services like WIC, and some may cease to exist. Special education will see a $1 billion cut nationwide.

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So why aren’t we more worried? Because it’s probably not gonna happen, says Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum. At least not all once. Whether or not Congress can ultimately reach a deal, the problem won’t come to a head in January. This is a “fiscal slope,” not a cliff, Drum says, and big changes like these take a lot of time. Congresspeople are great at procrastinating, but thankfully, they probably have until sometime in spring to avert disaster.

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Economist Dean Baker agrees. “Contrary to the image conveyed by the metaphor, pretty much nothing happens on January 1, 2013 if there is no budget deal in place,” he writes in Beat the Press. In fact, concern over impending (but completely avoidable) doom makes the deep cuts Republicans are pushing that much more palatable. Waiting until the Bush tax cuts expire (also January 1) would put the Democrats in a far better negotiating position, says Baker, and would not lead to immediate recession.

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And sequestration is by no means the only economic disaster we need to avert this year, says Josh Bivens and Andrew Fieldhouse at the Economic Policy Institute. A handful of big stimulus measures are also set to expire at the end of 2012, and that loss would be even greater than a sequestered budget. On January 1, emergency unemployment benefits, along with tax credits for students, parents, and low and middle income workers (all powerful fiscal multipliers) are set to expire. If Congress averts sequestration but lets these programs go, about 1.6 million Americans would lose their jobs by 2014. What we’re dealing with, says Bivens and Fieldhouse, is not so much a fiscal cliff as a series of potential—but not inevitable—pitfalls. Hence, the “fiscal obstacle course” metaphor.

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And whether or not sequestration actually kicks in, there’s a more immediate reason to be concerned about the automatic cuts, says Policy Shop’s Katherine Stone. With sectors like defense on the chopping block, private contractors are already planning to make cuts of their own. Lockheed Martin has floated the idea of laying off more than 100,000 workers by the January deadline, and other contractors are not far behind. If that happens, the companies are required by law to issue notices to their workers 60 days in advance—and that just happens to be November 2, the Friday before the election.

That hundreds of thousands of workers could get a pink slip four days before we go to the polls could be a disaster for the Democrats, says Stone, and they know it. Already, leading Dems have urged companies not to issue lay off notices on November 2, and the Office of Management and Budget has even offered to pay employers’ legal fees, should they be penalized for doing so (arguing that sequestration still may not happen). Not long after, Republicans including John McCain and Lindsey Graham fired back that the government had no right to condone violating the law, and threatened legal action against recalcitrant firms. “All this is ironic given that sequestration was a bipartisan compromise,” says Stone. Whether or not the lay-off notices turn into an October, or November, Surprise, we’ll have to wait and see.

Image by Powerruns, licensed under Creative Commons.   

Last Saturday, Hispanic Heritage Month officially began. For 25 years, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and a host of other museums and groups have celebrated Hispanic and Latino contributions to American history and culture. But this year’s celebrations are especially bittersweet, says Jose Miguel Leyva in the Progressive, when we consider the realities immigrants continue to face. After years of soaring rhetoric and patient activism, Latinos are “still being taken for granted by politicians of both parties.” The Obama administration in particular, despite inclusive language and a recent much-touted executive order, has pursued some of the most draconian immigration policies in decades, Leyva says. Most young immigrants lacking papers will be ineligible for “deferred action,” as well as Obamacare. “Latinos deserve substantive actions,” says Leyva, “not the hollow promises of politicians trying to curry favor with us at election time.”

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Want to protect voting rights? There’s an app for that, says Maegan E. Ortiz in Colorlines. Pennsylvania’s voter ID law might well be toast, but laws in other states could still disenfranchise millions of voters. That’s why minority communities across the country are using social media to register, inform, and support as many voters as possible between now and November, says Ortiz. Campaigns like Native Vote use Facebook and webinars to boost Native Americans’ typically low turnout, while Nuestra Elección! aims to target eligible Spanish-speakers and curb voter suppression.

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Despite the unprecedented drop in immigration from Mexico since 2000, deportations have reached an all-time high. A new report from the Department Homeland Security shows that last year, the government deported nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants, says Common Dreams. According to ICE records, that number has been growing quickly in recent years, up from 291,000 in 2007. 

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Video: author Junot Diaz on immigrant rights and why Americans are still in a state of denial about the contributions of undocumented immigrants. “We should be able to recognize as a community the people who do the heavy lifting, and stop afflicting them,” Diaz says. “Our contributions have to be honored.”

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On May Day 2006, millions of undocumented protesters breathed new life into an old, largely forgotten holiday. That day, the Day Without Immigrants, the streets of dozens of U.S. cities erupted with marches and actions as immigrants called for humane laws and treatment and raised awareness of their importance to American society. The 2006 actions, which marked a turning point in the immigrant rights movement, also signaled a new chapter in labor history. Since then, May Day has begun to approach its historical significance among American workers, from the 2008 West Coast port shutdown to this year’s mass demonstrations in support of Occupy and workers’ rights. Not to mention the over one million immigrant rights activists who took to the streets on May Day 2010.

Immigrants and workers are natural allies, say Ana Avendaño and Charlie Fanning in Dissent, and they’re now coming together in a big way. While some of the most high profile immigration activism in recent years has centered on the DREAM Act, many activists are now embracing a broader set of goals, and using organized labor to make them a reality. From the CLEAN Carwash Campaign in Los Angeles to No Papers No Fear, immigration activists are increasingly seeing workplaces as battlegrounds and unions as natural partners. What’s more, these alliances have expanded their scope to questions of community organizing and social justice, and in some ways resemble a burgeoning social movement, say Avendaño and Fanning. “This kind of grassroots mobilization holds much promise for those who dream of a more democratic future,” they say.

Image by Ludovic Bertron, licensed under Creative Commons.

Our weekly guide to what you may have missed.
 

It’s an unfortunate fact that many Global South countries depend on fossil fuels for economic survival. But Ecuador has found an innovative solution, says Audubon. The Quito government knows full well that its Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini oilfields are worth billions, but the fields are also sitting on Yasuní National Park. And the Amazonian park has treasures of its own, including a full 20 percent of world bird species and more tree varieties than all of North America. So, President Correa has proposed a bargain: if the rest of the world can pony up a (small) percentage of the oilfields’ lost revenue by 2024, they won’t drill. The proposal may add up to blackmail, but major players are already heavily involved, including the German government and the UN. The upshot could be a protected forest and an empowered Third World economy. 

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Understanding Rem Koolhaas’ satirical architecture: from the “setback” New York office building to the “crumbling” Bangkok high-rise, Koolhaas’ largely unbuilt designs disrupt expectations and lend common forms a shade of irony, says Smithsonian Magazine. There’s even an occasional anti-corporate message. One proposal for a Paris office block includes a single floor jutting away from rest of the tower, complete with subversive billboard signs such as ne jamais travailler, or “never work.”

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It’s not easy to catch some civil discourse these days, but it’s still out there. Check out Treehugger’s list of “26 Things We Can All Agree On” (with pictures!), mostly having to do with the environmental crisis. It’s a lot of no-brainers—“Every kid should have the opportunity to climb a tree,” “Tap water shouldn’t catch on fire”—but that’s the point. The sooner we realize most of us see eye to eye on things like, “Kids need healthy food,” the better.

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President Obama may be ahead in national polls, but that doesn’t change the Democrats’ deeper demography problems, says Jack Metzger in Working Class Perspectives. Like most Democrats, Obama did very well among minorities and women in 2008, winning the nonwhite vote by a full 60 percentage points. But also like previous elections, 2012 will likely come down to working class whites—and probably males. In that group, the Dems have a lousy record. Such a crude classification of American society is unfortunate, says Metzger, but the fact is that if the Republicans can edge out just 5 percent of the white working class from 2008, Romney’s headed for the White House. And in 2008, those white working class voters made up a majority in battleground states like Ohio and Iowa. The solution? The Democrats need to stop thinking in stereotypes, Metzger argues, and maybe—just maybe—stop calling everyone “middle class.”

Not to mention the fact that the middle class itself is changing faster than pollsters seem to realize. Should the Democrats venture far beyond Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium during the DNC next month, they might catch a glimpse of what local photographer Nancy Pierce has recently documented. There, once-booming exurbs have been transformed into ghost towns, says Streetsblog’s Angie Smith. We’ve known about exurban decline for a while now, Smith adds, but Pierce’s photography is still a powerful and surreal portrait of decay—and naturally poignant as the city plans to soon host the biggest political shindig of the year.  

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And don’t miss Democracy Now’s moving remembrance of Howard Zinn, who died two years ago at the age of 87. Zinn would have been 90 today, and to celebrate his birthday Democracy Now has posted a 2009 interview in which Zinn discussed honesty, history, and the power of ordinary people. And of course his message of standing up to injustice and falsehood is resonant as ever. 
 

A periander metalmark butterfly in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. Image by Geoff Gallice, licensed under Creative Commons.     

Our weekly guide to what you may have missed.  

“A science fiction fantasy from the sixties with a view to the sea.” We tend to forget about the Olympics once they’re over, but the games often leave behind quite a lot. In a series of vignettes in Granta, writers living in Beijing, Athens, and elsewhere recall the changes the Olympics brought to their communities, and what remains of the spectacle. “I happen to live in the Olympic neighborhood, built twenty years ago for the games,” says Santiago Roncagliolo, from Barcelona. “This is the point where past meets present, and you wonder which is the real one. I still have no answer.”

And check out this Sociological Images post on “the life of Olympic infrastructure once all the spectators pack up and go home,” from John Pack and Gary Hustwit’s Olympic City Project. 

One thing that’s clear about post-Olympic London, however: “the gloves come off,” says Dave Zirin in Edge of Sports (thanks, ZNet). International spectacle could hardly distract many Londoners from a crumbling economy, harsh austerity, and a blossoming national security state, and London politics are about to get messy. What will the city remember 20 years from now?

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Video: The Center for Investigative Journalism takes on industrial ag in The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers, a new animated short (reposted by Civil Eats). Bottom line: beef is a big rip-off. For every ounce of beef that’s made, a pound of greenhouse gases are also produced. And that says nothing for other externalized costs, like health risks, water pollution, and mistreatment of workers, to name a few. Oh, and we’re addicted to it.

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From Colossal: Recreating Van Gogh masterpieces with colored newsprint and pieces of wood.  

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Climate change has been the forefront of a lot of people’s minds this summer, along with a lot of very difficult questions about our role in confronting crisis and adapting to change. But for Sarah Gilman, one of the biggest questions is how to deal with a loss of this magnitude. Writing in High Country News, she wonders how we “grasp the obliteration of so much we have known and loved,” as we move very quickly from world to another entirely different one. Reflecting on creative responses like Maya Lin’s “What is missing” project, Gilman’s own answer points toward the future. “Looking forward, grieving for what has been,” she says, “we must remember that loss is not new to the world, and that loss is also possibility.”

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President Obama may have put the kibosh on Keystone XL, but that didn’t stop TransCanada from trying to make it happen in smaller pieces, especially in the southern plains. But activists in Texas have no intention of letting that happen, says Forrest Wilder in The Texas Observer. Construction on the pipeline could begin very soon, which is why Tar Sands Blockade got into gear on Thursday with “a sustained campaign of civil disobedience” to block the project in East Texas. Dozens of people have signed on, marking a new chapter in what Wilder calls “one of the biggest environmental fights of our time."  

The blockade in Texas makes a powerful statement, says Bill McKibben in Think Progress (via Grist), and invokes the civil disobedience last year that eventually spurred action from Washington. What’s more, the actions come at an appropriate time, as similar protests have erupted in places like West Virginia, Montana, and the Pacific Northwest over coal exports and mining. The fight over Keystone XL united a lot of disparate groups of people last year, says McKibben, and that can happen again.  

Image by Kiko Alario Salom, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Remember back in 2009 when Texas Gov. Rick Perry almost-but-not-quite said his state should secede from the union? The small media blitz that followed dramatically illustrated that even in the 21^st century, the South retains a good deal of its separateness, and its bad rap among Northerners. After all, America’s most populous region was the last holdout for slavery and segregation. And among many Northern liberals, the South’s recent recasting as the low-wage, anti-union Sunbelt hasn’t helped its standing. The solution? Let them go, says writer Chuck Thompson, who’s written a tongue-in-cheek book arguing for southern secession. The upshot, says Thompson in an interview with AlterNet, would be a mutual breakup, hopefully without all the fuss of a civil war. Oh, and they can take Utah.

And speaking of culture wars, what kind of sandwich defines you as a voter? In the wake of the Chick-fil-A firestorm, it may come as no shock that restaurant preferences can say quite a lot about a person’s politics. That’s the idea behind a graphic posted on Sociological Images by Gwen Sharp that charts customers at a handful of restaurants against their voting behavior and political outlook. As with almost everything else in 21^st century, there’s a pretty clear partisan divide here. But what’s really interesting, says Sharp, is what the results say about the class dimensions of voter turnout: patrons at sit-down restaurants, whether liberal or conservative, were in general much more likely to vote than fast food customers. It also points out an irony of the Chick-fil-A controversy: while Chick-fil-A customers are in general very conservative, they’re not among those most likely to vote. Whether the restaurant’s recent politicization changes this, is hard to say.    

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“Quick, Henry, the Flit!” Long before Horton the Elephant and Yertle the Turtle, Theodore Seuss Geisel made a name for himself in advertising and political cartoons, says Josh Jones at Open Culture. One of his most famous ads for Standard Oil’s Flit insect repellant went about as viral as anything could in the 1930s, and Geisel was soon called on to devote his artistic skill to the Allied war effort. Following the war, and after recasting himself as Dr. Seuss, Geisel devoted himself to somewhat more high minded themes and ideas. But these early works still retain a kind of surreal Seuss magic, especially when you consider the context. Here’s a link to some more.

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Turns out dirty elections go back a long way. In 1758, while running for the Virginia House of Burgesses, George Washington buttered his voters up with free beer on election day. That’s the first milestone on Mother Jones’ new dark money timeline, beginning with the American colonies. But of course, it only gets worse from there.

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With or without a heat wave, most Americans are probably not taking to the beach this summer. That Americans have less vacation days than workers in most other rich countries is no surprise, but it turns out most of us don’t even use the time we get. A recent survey by Right Management found that American workers leave an average of 11 vacation days unused each year, out of fear of being fired, says Kathy M. Newman in Working Class Perspectives. The survey also found that two thirds of American workers avoid taking lunch breaks and many avoid taking sick days.

And many companies are starting to take notice. But rather than provide better working conditions, firms like McDonald’s and Applebee’s are tapping into worker fatigue in advertisements, Newman says. In one recent ad for VisitLasVegas.com, a Norma Rae-looking scene unfolds in which a woman in an office attempts to organize her fellow office workers to, well, visit Las Vegas. Whether the woman is later fired for taking her vacation time is hard to say.

Image by eyeliam, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Our online guide to what you may have missed this week.  

The new transpo bill may be disappointing for cyclists, but that doesn’t stop more and more people from getting interested in biking. And increasingly, that means universities and think tanks, says Pacific Standard. Ideas like bikeability and how cycling figures into class distinctions are gaining a big following on campuses throughout the country. North Carolina’s Lees-McGrae College even offers a cycling minor.

And Congress also looks pretty powerless to stop a new push for national bike routes led by nonprofits like the Adventure Cycling Association. Currently, six national routes are in the works across the lower 48, including—get this—Route 66, all the way from Chicago to LA, says Grist. The Great American Bike Trip, as its known, is still very much in the planning stage, but a nod last year from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials—comprised mostly of state DOT big wigs—was a big step forward. If all goes according to plan, the road trip of the 21^st century could look very different.  

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The Baffler’s Thomas Frank asks, how vibrant is your city? And, more to the point, who cares?

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Redlining and blockbusting may be long gone, but segregation isn’t going anywhere, says the Pew Research Center. A new study finds that segregation based on income level has increased dramatically since 1980, especially in the Sunbelt and the Northeast.

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Adrien Brody does a mean Salvador Dali in Woody Allen’s recent Midnight in Paris, but Dali himself is no stranger to the big screen. In the late 1960s, the surrealist master appeared on not one, but three French TV commercials for chocolate, wine, and yes, even Alka-Seltzer. Open Culture posted this video medley, along with some fascinating background.

Oh, and here’s an equally bizarre Dali appearance on What’s My Line in 1957.

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A little good news on climate from Treehugger: despite the heat wave, US energy production is generating its lowest carbon emission levels since 1992. Reportedly, this year’s first quarter saw an 8 percent drop from 2011.

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Finally, how much do you spend on entertainment? Sociological Images reposted an interesting graphic comparing household budgets between classes. Among the biggest differences between rich and poor are how much goes to health insurance, food, and especially retirement. More surprising were the constants: most people tend to put about the same share of their income toward things like clothes, going out to eat, and even education, regardless of how much they make. And as a general rule, working class families tend to spend a much bigger pie slice on immediate necessities like utilities and groceries.

And those differences are growing. A new interactive feature from Demos charts the demographics of poverty in America, and how they’ve changed since 1970. Nearly 50 million Americans today are below the poverty line, and people of color, women, and young people disproportionately affected.

Image by Prayitno, licensed under Creative Commons.   

On Tuesday, four undocumented immigrants revealed their status in front of Maricopa County Courthouse in Phoenix, and were promptly arrested, says In These Times. Inside the courthouse, county sheriff Joe Arpaio, an infamous supporter of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, faced charges of discrimination against Latino communities. The arrested activists released a statement condemning federal and state immigration laws, and the culture of fear they produced, beginning with “We are no longer afraid.” The action kicks off a six-week No Papers, No Fear bus tour from Arizona to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. Along the way, activists hope to persuade other immigrants to reveal their status, and to raise awareness about immigration issues.

Twenty-four year old Natally Cruz was one of the four activists to be arrested on Tuesday. Read her inspiring blog post on why she decided to risk deportation.  

Self-determination and social equality have never been stronger in Latin America. So why has the U.S. has been quietly building up its military presence in heart of the continent?

Graphic: the gorgeous new Internet Map charts the 350,000 largest websites, their country of origin, and their traffic.

Keith Ellison and Michelle Bachman are on opposite political poles. But their side-by-side Minnesota congressional districts aren’t all that different.

Extrajudicial killing? State surveillance? A government obsession with social order? Sound like fascism? Maybe, but maybe Batman as well.  

Video: Rudyard Kipling on truth in writing.

Why we’re heading straight for a food crisis, with or without a new farm bill.

Women are outperforming men on a number of fronts. Where have all the male role models gone?

What Occupy means for street art, and why we should remember its history.

Why there’s (finally) reason for hope in Caribbean drug politics. 

Image by Bansby, licensed under Creative Commons.

Environmentalism has a very different meaning for indigenous farmers in Guatemala. Last year, hundreds of Maya Q’eqchi families were evicted from their farms in Guatemala’s Polochic Valley to make way for corn fields, says Treehugger’s Brian Merchant. But instead of hungry people, that corn is destined to feed the growing demand for ethanol and other biofuels, especially in Europe. Evictions like this one have increased dramatically since the EU announced a plan to get 10 percent of its transportation energy from biofuels, reports John Vidal of The Guardian. The farmers’ struggle to reclaim land continues, but the affair raises deeper questions about the direction we’re taking toward sustainability, says Vidal.  

And don’t miss… 

Outsourcing journalism? Why a Filipino freelancer may be behind your local news.

Forget Romney—why aren’t more people talking about John Roberts’ flip-flop on health care?

The people Obamacare won’t cover, and why Bobby Jindal isn’t helping. 

Why community-owned solar gardens solve like 10 problems at once.

That time Indiana tried to legally change Pi to 3.2.

The surprising community potential of vacant lots.

Video: a flash mob in Spain goes philharmonic (and check out the comments!).

What a local grain economy would look like, and why we need it.

Election graphic: why a person from Wyoming is three times as powerful as a person from California. And why this probably isn’t gonna change.  

The Midwestern heat wave is bad, but is it global warming?

Cyclists in Delaware score big on project funding, but Congress lags behind.

Video: some gorgeous and diverse Algerian music, in honor of 50 years of independence.  

Islamophobia in the U.S. has ignited controversy recently, but its roots go deeper than you might think. Washington has a long history of suspicion toward Islam, especially political Islam, says Edward E. Curtis IV in Religion & Politics. That suspicion reached a new level in the 1960s, when COINTELPRO mobilized the FBI against groups like the Nation of Islam that sought to connect the civil rights struggle to a larger Muslim identity. The pervasive fear of Arab Islamism is much more recent, and demonstrates just how absent Muslims remain from the public arena. Recognizing this, says Curtis, means recognizing that Islam—even political Islam—is a lot less foreign to the U.S. than many people think.

Image by Jack Liefer, licensed under Creative Commons. Editor’s note: this image is of a Guatemalan farm, though not in the Polochic Valley. 

Mark Twain to censors: “I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively.” After hearing that his books had been censored by the Brooklyn Public Library’s Children’s Department in 1905, Twain got his sarcasm on in this one-of-a-kind letter to a librarian there. “The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean,” he snidely continues. “I know this by experience.” Read the rest of his delightful scorn, here.

And don't miss:

An argument for a community-based approach to mental illness.
 

Some not-so-pretty pictures of tar-sand mining in Alberta.
 

The latest breakthrough in invisibility-cloak technology. 
 

Why Warren Buffett is buying up every last local newspaper he can find.
 

Colorado’s amazing, frozen, (and almost) exploding cows.

Why Elvis refused to dance at his senior prom in 1953.

Tokyo’s gorgeous, haunting LED-illuminated river.

It turns out that college students’ internal gaydar is surprisingly accurate.

Why LSD is more likely to block brain activity than expand it.

Solitary confinement is more and more common in American prisons, even though it defies common sense.

Why we should really be taking the Unabomber more seriously. Ted Kaczynski, the math-genius-turned-domestic-terrorist probably has every reason to stay in prison. But his manifesto on the dangers of technology dependence is gaining more ground among academics and philosophers. Find out why, here.

The Crockpot: Utne’s Weekly Guide to What You May Have Missed  

It turns out that only about a tenth of Americans believe climate change isn’t real, and more than two thirds think it should be a bigger political issue. The findings, by Yale and George Mason University, fly in the face of what’s passing for an environmental debate in this country, says Ecopolitology. Most Americans also believe the environmentalism/economic growth conflict is a false one and that sustainability can help create jobs. The really weird part? Another George Mason study back in 2010 found that about a quarter of weathercasters thought global warming was a hoax. But honestly, who believes what the weatherman says?

And don’t miss… 

Why the pope controls our traffic laws—and how Samoa learned to fight back.

Why Arizona could be a battleground in this election—no, really.   

Check out the new, brilliant, extremely Russian mobile sauna. 

Iran to Google Maps: It’s the Persian Gulf, OK? 

Why sex robots will soon take over the world without us really noticing.

Explore Tokyo’s exquisite, real-life glass house.

Researchers at Emory University complete the first-ever MRI scan of a dog’s brain.

What a therapeutic playground for autism sufferers might look like.

Why Cap’n Crunch is a total chauvinist.

Why it took the Queen of England 169 years to get real on freedom of speech.

What an ancient Roman garbage heap can teach us about designing modern parks.

Knowing more than one language has a profound effect on brain development in children, and not just in language skills, says New Scientist. New studies have found that bilingual kids are better at concentrating, multitasking, and are faster to empathize with others. And in adults, bilingualism may even stave off the effects of aging, dementia, and Alzheimer’s as it keeps the brain active and vital. The best part? It’s never too late to learn. Read More.  

Today may be the biggest event on the Occupy calendar, with protests planned in over 100 cities across the country—not to mention the massive marches and actions in places as far flung as Moscow and Manila. Historically, May Day has been a European affair, despite its very American origins. But Occupy plans to bring it all back home today with marches, dance-offs, and of course the occasional bike cavalry ride.

So far today big outlets like the New York Times have been pretty silent on what’s happening, but that doesn’t mean things are quiet. There are plenty of places to get the latest on happenings on Wall Street, Frank Ogawa Plaza, and the dozens of other flashpoints erupting today. Here are some of our favorites:

A lot of sources are touting up-to-the-minute coverage of Occupy events, but Adbusters has taken it one step further. The site offers live streaming video from Wall Street, London, Barcelona, and other international hotspots.

R88R, the creator of Utne AltWire, has launched an aggregator site devoted exclusively to Occupy. Here you can see the Occupy stories tweeted by Influencers like Democracy Now! and @OccupyWallSt. The site also features live feeds from groups like the Media Consortium and pages featuring trending topics like pepper spray and surveillance. But be warned: it’s addictive.  

From Chicago, In These Times has been all over today’s events. The magazine’s Uprising page has had extensive coverage in the lead-up to May 1, including articles on Occupy’s Spanish connection and a growing student movement. A story published today by Rebecca Burns explores Occupy Chicago’s Chicano roots and exactly what a general strike means nowadays.

And for those who haven’t yet seen it, Occupy Wall Street’s official page has rapid-fire live updates from around New York City. The latest: Brooklyn Occupiers are crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan to begin a march to Wall Street. On the West Coast, protesters and strikers have formed picket lines at LAX that will likely delay travelers. Students in Portland have gathered outside public schools. The site also has a number of links to live sources like Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. On Twitter, hashtags to follow are #M1GS and #GeneralStrike.

For a little context, ZNet has a number of new articles and essays by Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, and other scholars and thinkers. Amy Goodman’s interview with historian David Harvey, published this morning, explores the shifting meaning of public space, from Haymarket to Occupy. In another essay, Rachel Leone reflects on mutual aid possibilities in a corporate society.  

And from our friends at the Media Consortium, Media for the 99% features an interactive map of stories, events, and arrests across the country and a live OWS stream from Free Speech TV. The site also boasts its own live coverage of Occupy happenings, from media partners nationwide.

Image above by RMajouji, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Check out Free Speech's live feed right here, and check back at Utne.com for updates later on.

The physics of fiction, or literature as a moral vehicle.

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Repress U and the homeland security campus, updated for the Class of 2012.

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Why thousands of Christians are giving up carbon for Lent.

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The Republican Party’s problems with geography will only get more significant.

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Absolute ultimate (Bonsai) tree houses.

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Yet another reason to stress out about stressing out.

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Something we should really start telling our unsubscribers.

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How to go from the Driver By Truckers to Of Montreal in three moves or less.

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The insider story on the Easter Bunny’s checkered (and very German) past.

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Evolution might be why we can’t agree on anything—including evolution.

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Would you let your school login to your Facebook account? In an alarming new trend, universities and employers are asking to login to students' and employees' Facebook accounts.

Was Frankenstein actually about childbirth?

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Buying this thing will make you happy.

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Grope and Pillage: The woeful budget track record of the TSA.

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Every year in Colombia there are hundreds of reported cases of the criminal use of burundanga, a mysterious drug that allegedly robs victims of their free will.

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The Great New-York-to-Paris Automobile Race of 1908.

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Life lessons learned in a French cemetery.

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A historical manuscripts cataloger spends her days archiving old letters, novel drafts, diaries, and odds and ends like Dickens’ cigar case and a lottery ticket signed by George Washington.

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Glorious day—new literary prizes for fiction and nonfiction writers!

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Why most people get divorced in March.

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Bored at work? Get started on one of these: A mural made from 450,000 staples.

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Forget your thinking cap. Slip on a white lab coat to focus your brain on a tricky task.

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The next time you cut your finger, you could save a life. A new project aims to include a bone-marrow donor sign-up kit in Band-Aid boxes. Dab some blood on the included card, put it in the provided envelope and mail it to a lab, and join the ranks of donors. “I wanted to make it as fucking simple as possible to do something good,” says Graham Douglas, the man behind the idea.

Image by D’mooN, licensed under Creative Commons.