About that Occupy Iowa Caucus Plan

Alert reader Helen gram cracker posted a link to this CNN article in comments earlier today:

Occupy Wall Street activists plan to amass in Iowa one week before the Iowa caucuses – up to the day they’re held on Jan. 3, CNN has learned.

The plan has been dubbed the “First in the Nation Caucus Occupation” – a play on words for the first-in-the-nation presidential contest. The idea is to have activists from across the nation, and possibly beyond, descend on Iowa.

The plan: “people coming to Iowa, occupying every presidential (candidate’s) office, shutting them down until they start talking real turkey about what’s going on in this country, where the 99% of the people who are not benefiting, at the expense of the 1% who are getting away with murder,” said Frank Cordaro, one of the organizers.

So, I did a little research on this article after Helen gram cracker posted it. The guy who says he organized it is Frank Cordaro, a well-known enough (I can’t make this stuff up) Christian Anarchist to have his own Wiki page:

Frank Cordaro (born 1951) is a peace activist and co-founder of the Des Moines, Iowa Catholic Worker group. He frequently attends protests and gives lectures at school and community events in Nebraska and Iowa. He was a Roman Catholic priest from 1985 until leaving the priesthood in 2003 for personal reasons, including his wish to be released from the vow of celibacy.^[1][2] He is known as a Christian anarchist and frequently participates in peace rallies involving civil disobedience.

So Frank used to be Father Frank, but renounced his vows at least in part because he said he wanted out of the vow of celibacy. (But not into the sanctity of marriage, Father? Tsk, tsk.)

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Apparently there’s a video that’s gone viral on YouTube over the event, put out by Anonymous. Now Father Frank is taking pains to make sure that his idea is distanced from the Anonymous idea.

Cordaro said, “We’re not anonymous. We put out our names. You know where we live. We’re transparent. Everybody’s going to know exactly what we do and we’re going to be absolutely non-violent.”

Good luck putting the violence-cat back in the bag, Father. Actions have consequences, dude. Some of them are unintended.

Here’s the video: