Democracy Now!

The Occupy Wall Street movement celebrated its one-year anniversary on Monday with actions in New York City and other cities across the country. In Manhattan, protesters tried to block access to the New York Stock Exchange by erecting a “People’s…

Dr. Jill Stein’s Green Party vice-presidential running mate, Cheri Honkala, is a single mother who has firsthand experience with homelessness. In 2011, she ran as the Green Party candidate for sheriff of Philadelphia on a platform of ending foreclosures and halting evictions. “Large sections of the population are just sitting out….”

The online whistleblower WikiLeaks continues to release documents from the Syria Files, more than 2 million emails said to be from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies over a 6 year period ending earlier this year. WikiLeaks spokesperson Sarah Harrison said the files would embarrass not only the Syrian government but many of its political foes.

3 top figures from Argentina’s former ruling junta have been sentenced to additional time behind bars for the deliberate theft of babies from political prisoners. Former dictators Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, as well as former navy officer Jorge Acosta, were found guilty of a systematic plan to take the babies of dissidents and adopt them into military families.

The United Nations is calling for a number of new taxes in a bid to help aid the world’s poor. In a new report, the World Economic and Social Survey calls for proposals including taxes on carbon emissions, financial transactions, and on the world’s billionaires. Robert Vos of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs unveiled the report.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s protracted effort to fight extradition to Sweden suffered a body blow this week. Britain’s Supreme Court upheld the arrest warrant, issued in December 2010. After the court announced its split 5-2 decision, the justices surprised many legal observers by granting Assange’s lawyers an opportunity to challenge their decision.

World leaders are convening at Camp David in Maryland for the G8 Summit. Leading nonprofits such as Save the Children and Oxfam are urging G8 leaders to live up to a 2009 pledge of $22 billion towards food security in developing nations of which only a quarter has been met. Activists are also urging G8 leaders to build on their previous commitments to urgently tackle hunger.

Labor and immigrant groups were joined by Occupy demonstrators nationwide on Tuesday in May Day rallies for economic injustice and humane immigration reform. In New York City, a long day of separate actions converged in a rally at Union Square and then a march down to Wall Street, where the Occupy movement began last year.

Labor and progressive groups are preparing for a national slate of protests on Tuesday in what’s expected to be one of the largest May Day turnouts since the immigrant rights marches of 2006 and 2007. Occupy Wall Street is seeking a turnout of tens of thousands under the slogan of “General Strike. No Work. No Shopping. Occupy Everywhere.”

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously adopted a Russia-European resolution that authorizes an initial deployment of up to 300 unarmed military observers to Syria for three months to help bolster a fragile week-old ceasefire. The deployment depends on an assessment about compliance with a six-point peace deal mediated by envoy Kofi Annan.