It’s Coming: Union, Leftist Leaders Announce ‘99% Spring?’… and Training in ‘Places of Worship’

Posted on February 27, 2012 at 8:13am by Jonathon M. Seidl

Since Occupy Wall Street seemingly went into hibernation (we note seemingly because the movement keeps popping up despite what some national outlets are reporting), The Blaze has brought you plenty of analysis theorizing that the spring could be an even bigger time for the movement. Now, it looks like those theories have been confirmed: the unions and other leftists have announced a “99% spring.”

“We are at a crossroads as a country,” a letter on the site dedicated to the new movement says. “We have a choice to make. Greater wealth for a few or opportunity for many. Tax breaks for the richest or a fair shot for the rest of us. A government that can be bought by the highest bidder, or a democracy that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
It continues: “The choice is in our hands. This spring, we will act on that choice and rise up in the tradition of our forefathers and foremothers. We will not be complicit with the suffering in our families for another year. We will prepare ourselves for sustained non-violent direct action.”
That “preparation” looks like a week-long training session from April 9-15. But not just any training session, this training session will be held across the country and will reportedly feature meetings in “places of worship:”

From April 9-15 we will gather across America, 100,000 strong, in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets to join together in the work of reclaiming our country. We will organize trainings to:

1. Tell the story of our economy: how we got here, who’s responsible, what a different future could look like, and what we can do about it
2. Learn the history of non-violent direct action, and
3. Get into action on our own campaigns to win change.

“This spring we rise!” the website declares. “We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”

So just who exactly is behind this? The letter contains “signers” that will be familiar to you. Or at least their organizations will. And it’s a buffet of far leftists, unions, and even the communist group Working Families Party. Oh, and of course Van Jones:

• Sarita Gupta
  Jobs With Justice
• Bob King
  United Auto Workers
• George Goehl
  National Peoples Action
• Ai-jen Poo
  National Domestic Workers Alliance
• Justin Ruben
  MoveOn.org
• Mary Kay Henry
  Service Employees International Union
• Van Jones and Natalie Foster
  Rebuild the Dream
• Phil Radford
  Greenpeace
• Leo Gerard
  United Steel Workers
• Daniel Cantor
  Working Families Party
• Bruce Klipple
  United Electrical Workers Union

But while Bob King of the United Auto Workers (UAW) is a signer of the letter, might the union be behind it more than it’s letting on? It would seem so. The Daily Caller was able to download a cache of files from the UAW website last week that point to a high level of organizing:

[A] series of files The Daily Caller downloaded from the United Auto Workers website indicate that the organized labor powerhouse is behind the effort.
The files, downloaded Sunday, include campaign talking points, a fill-in-the-blank press release template for participating organizations and an advance look at the social media campaign the organizers plan for Facebook and Twitter.
Also included is a “FYI” letter designed for endorsers to distribute, complete with a blank space at the top of the list of participating groups. Filling in a given organization’s name lends the impression that it, not the UAW, is the campaign’s driving force.
A Google cache indicates that the files were available on an unprotected area of the UAW’s web server at least as early as February 16. They disappeared from public view Monday.

The Caller was able to capture the information before it was deleted:
Uaw 99 Percent Spring Daily Caller
Also interesting? It appears the domain for the 99% Spring was registered by the leftist group MoveOn.org (also a signer of the letter).
“We will rise this spring, because we DO hold these truths to be self evident,” the 99% Spring site concludes, “that all men and women are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Get ready.
(H/T: Forbes)