What is it within a system, or movement, that discourages or drives away such people? Is this a healthy or unhealthy sign for Occupy?

So, Occupy is off to a good start for 2013. Heading into its second year of existence, it has a tailwind of good will and solid evidence of steadfast members who both lead and follow as called upon.

A coalition of Occupy groups called StrikeDebt is encouraging people to combat debt by way of popular resistance... up to and including complete default. Occupy hasn't left its "radical" roots, but has evolved as a voice on the subject of banking and finance.

Cindy Lee Sheehan could be the prior decade's Occupier: she went where she wasn't welcome, claimed a patch of land that wasn't hers, was surrounded by unfriendly forces, but tenaciously continued to exercise her first amendment right.

Occupy's upcoming first birthday, known amongst its busy organizers as "S17" (Sept. 17 -- Get it?), will definitely be different from its original emergence on September 17, 2011.

In her "mobile extension" of the OWS Protests, Occupy Wall Street's Janet Wilson is proving that authorities might evict Occupy from streets and parks, but cannot keep it off the road.

Ret. Captain Ray Lewis has found himself more and more estranged from today's police tactics. He doesn't like it, and wants to come to your city and tell you about it personally.

Long before a single Zuccotti protestor waving a cardboard sign decorated with protest art was ever arrested, Robert Lederman had been there, done that.

Is Ray Lewis a renegade, or does he embody the characteristics of the "true American" that people think about when we picture "common" people in history who have stood up against powerful forces?

Occupy is rallying its foot soldiers as well as a major online army to see that the upcoming U.N. Rio+20 Earth Summit. I imagine that in the Main Street Media, this will be billed as, "Tree Huggers Meet Wall Street Bashers."

May Day is a holiday for the 99 percent. It is a day for people to come together, across all those lines which too often divide us -- race, class, gender, religion -- and challenge the systems that create these divisions.