More music at our gatherings would help move the movement, as would bigger signs enable more people in passing autos to be able to read what we have to say. But on this blustery vivid fall afternoon, we at least had Steve Schoonover come down here from Michigan and sing something by Coner Oberst of Bright Eyes.

Schoonover said people are waking up, realizing the power of moral ideas.

“We need to have some moral respect for people in a way we haven’t in a long time.”

Schoonover said building a movement requires clarity about tactics, strategy, and specific goals, as well as set of values and attitudes on which to base that sort of planning.

Dozens of people who are part of Occupy DC, camping out in Freedom Plaza and McPhearson Square, packed the line to get into the House Armed Services Committee where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was testifying. Only 15 people were allowed in and none were allowed to even quietly hold up signs—a clear violation of their free speech

One by one, seven people who managed to get inside got up to protest the wars. CODEPINK Alli McCracken, 22, held up a sign saying “Fund My Education, Not Your Wars.” “My generation only knows war and a bankrupt country. We deserve better,” she yelled, as she was yanked out and handcuffed by Capitol Police. Also arrested was 21-year-old Iraq veteran Michael Patterson, who was sent—at the age of 18—to be an interrogator in Iraq. “You are murdering people; I saw what you do to people in Iraq!” he shouted. “Then you refuse to even take care of our veterans when they return.” Nancy Brennan, 63, asked “How many lives will be sacrificed? How many lies will be told?” as she was arrested.

The protesters who were left in the hallway and not allowed inside chanted, “We are the 99 percent and we don’t support these wars.”

Ann Bell, an economist by trade, draws those conclusions from her experience with fighting back against the attacks on collective bargaining in Wisconsin. She spoke with the Columbus Free Press last weekend at Freedom Plaza, one of the sites of the ongoing occupations in DC. Like her counterparts in Occupy Columbus, Bell is part of a national movement to make government and corporations more accountable to the majority of ordinary people.

“As we were illegally kicked out of the capital and moved more to focusing on the recall elections, we really kind of saw the weakness of the progressive movement (in terms of ) not building long term organizations and umbrella groups that we can use independent of who wins elections and independent of what exactly the issue is that we’re being confronted with.”

Bell said the fundamental issue to base a mass movement on is income inequality.

That's what we chanted, passing groups of male cops. Some of them appeared to respond or react by squinting and tightening their shoulders and jaws. Don't know who among the 60 of us marchers started the chant, but it seems to have been a playful, taste-of-your-own-medicine challenge to patriarchy. What role does feminism play in the occupations going on around the country ?

The majority of the organizers for the October 2011 occupation of Freedom Plaza are women. And women seem to have played a leading role in opposing our nation's militarism by way of--among other means--Code Pink, an organization named in defiance of post-9/11 color-coded terrorism threat levels.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The worst floods in decades have killed 261 people, swamped an export manufacturing zone, and caused millions of dollars in damage to crops and property while government officials publicly prayed to Buddha and prepared Bangkok for a destructive deluge.

Some fleeing residents in the central city of Ayutthaya climbed aboard an elephant and clung to their valuables, including an electric fan and plastic bags stuffed with household goods, while riding the huge pachyderm through tusk-deep floodwater.

In Bangkok, multi-story public parking areas at shopping malls were turned into emergency shelters for automobiles, where people could park their cars for free -- as long as need be -- if their residential areas faced flooding.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was elected as Thailand's first female prime minister in July, announced on Sunday (Oct. 9) that she was canceling her visits to Singapore and Malaysia, scheduled for Oct. 11 and 12, so she could command emergency assistance.