New Orleans        I admit that I check the Google alerts everyday to see how the alternative universe is doing where this other “wade rathke” lives, who is often unrecognizable to me.  The most recent episode in his “life,” was some kind of “days of rage” planned for Wall Street, which was quite the buzz on Glenn Beck’s “news” website, Blaze.com.  On the right they took all of this fantasy so seriously that I actually had to turndown interview requests from various Fox News outlets wanting to know more details on what I was supposedly planning for this unknown event.  Most often I was linked to Stephen Lerner, my colleague from the SEIU years, who was attracting some of the right wing love out there.
I guess the “days” happened this last weekend with not 20,000 but perhaps 1000 folks in some part in New York City, none of which is surprising.  In NYC more than a 1000 folks would gather for almost anything.  The real shock was to read Andrew Brietbart’s Big Government report where they conceded that all of the reports of Lerner and “Rathke’s” wild and revolutionary doings here were in fact “unfounded,” and to add a cherry on top, they even zinged Beck and Blaze for the fabulous fiction.

#OccupyWallSt: Just a Saturday Stroll Through the Park…
by LaborUnionReport
It was supposed to be this:

On the 17th of September, we want to see 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.
Instead, as they say about the best laid plans, it was something entirely different. It was, frankly, a stroll through a park—Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, to be exact.
A Non-Union Non-Event

Over the summer, on the heels of Arab Spring, an anti-capitalist group called adbusters established a campaign to occupy Wall Street, beginning on September 17th. Whether coincidental or not, September 17th also happened to be Constitution Day. While there had been some unfounded unfounded speculation a few weeks ago that the SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke were behind the OccupyWallSt movement, there were never any signs that the Marxist-Anarchist protesters had any formal union backing—nor has there been anything posted on union websites about the occupation of Wall St.
This morning, protestors did, however, call for “revolution”.

Big Government then linked back to the Blaze below.
The alternative universe of the right is a scary, scary place though.  The original Blaze article may not have gone viral, but it did get traction.  More than 6000 righters had “liked” it and moved it to their Facebook walls.  The story had been tweeted 513 times and there were 739 comments most of which would have stripped paint off of cars.

And for all of the good work that Color of Change and others had done to get advertisers to boycott Beck during his Fox News time with Rupert Murdoch’s empire, it was disconcerting to see ads on the Blaze story from Orvis, where I’ve bought more than one fly rod and reel, and Green Mountain coffee promoting fair trade coffee, which will leave me head scratching a good part of the day.  What’s up with these guys?
US Who Is Behind the ‘US Day of Rage’ to ‘Occupy’ Wall Street this September 17th?

What, exactly, is a “US Day of Rage?” Well, on September 17th we may find out for certain, but until then, The Blaze is revealing what information does exist about this very nefarious-sounding campaign.

A US Day of Rage is the title given to a day of ostensibly “non-violent” civil disobedience orchestrated by a group of radicals — that reportedly include SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke (who, coincidentally, formerly served as president of SEIU’s local New Orleans branch) — targeting Wall Street and U.S. capitalism. It’s worth noting that the title of the movement — if its intentions are indeed non-violent in nature — appears to contradict itself slightly.

But what is perhaps even more interesting than its title is who is allegedly behind the movement.

You may recall that back in March The Blaze exposed Lerner for stating his aspirations to destroy JP Morgan Chase and cause the collapse of the entire stock market.
Now, the US Day of Rage protests, staged by a collective of activist groups allegedly in conjunction with Lerner and Rathke, are planning the actual “occupation” of Wall Street September 17, complete with a tent city set smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district.  Similar protests are purportedly set to take place across the nation — and even world — at the same time. Some Day of Rage organizers are even calling on activists to squat in Manhattan’s financial district for months at a time.
The Blaze’s report on Lerner, who serves on SEIU’s International Executive Board, caught the union agitator stating:

So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be JP Morgan Chase. …. And so we’re going to roll out over the next couple of months what will hopefully be an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about challenge the power of Wall Street. And so what we’re looking at is in the first week of May, we get enough people together – we’re starting now – to really have a week of action in New York with the goal of … I don’t want to go into any details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room, but the goal would be that we would roll out in New York the first week in May.

Then, like clockwork, some 400 activists brought Lerner’s dream to fruition and converged on JP Morgan Chase’s annual shareholders’ meeting in May — this time in Columbus, Ohio rather than New York. The group that staged this particular protest, the National People’s Action, reportedly confirmed it was there as part of its “Showdown in America” campaign against the big banks. Since the location of JP Morgan Chase’s meeting was surrounded by a moat, the activists, who likened themselves to Robin Hood, even brought a collapsible bridge to “storm the castle.”

It is also perhaps worth noting that in March, The Blaze reported Rathke and Lerner called for “days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase.” Rathke mentioned some of Lerner’s key assertions:

While labeling Lerner an ex-SEIU official who was signaling that unions and community organizations were “dead,” also reported hook-line-and-sinker that in May, according to Lerner, there would be days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase signally the beginning of the anti-banking jihad.

So it might add up now that Klein Online reported Rathke’s efforts are being organized by Lerner, who, as part of his planned protests, called for “a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city:”

The planned Sept. 17 day of rage seems to be the culmination of Rathke’s efforts.
Those efforts are being organized by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member who reportedly visited the Obama White House at least four times.

The aim, according to Lerner, is to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”

“How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich?” Lerner asked rhetorically in March.
So, it appears, Columbus could have been one of the ten U.S. cities en route to New York for the “big day.”