Allison Kilkenny | The Nation

During the presidential debates, President Obama and Mitt Romney successfully avoided (with an assist from the debate moderators) addressing several prominent issues, including climate change, gun control, drone strikes, poverty and the housing crisis.

While the candidates occasionally discussed these gravely important issues in an indirect way—Obama mentioned “folks who are striving to get into the middle class,” Mitt Romney paid homage to the poor by promising to make the social safety net “more efficient,” i.e., privatize it, and Obama paid his usual lip service to wind and solar energy—the candidates were largely able to skirt and parry actually confronting these issues in any meaningful way.

In fact, during the last debate on foreign policy, which on more than one occasion strayed into the domestic policy arena, the candidates agreed on several issues: Iran is the greatest threat ever known to the planet, drone strikes are necessary and tools for peace, the United States would back Israel if it were attacked and China is abusing trade. Afterwards, in discussing the last debate, MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted that there was very little substantive disagreement between the candidates.

In addition to being entirely shut out of this year’s presidential debates, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, were arrested for “blocking traffic” as they attempted to enter the debate at Hofstra University. The women were detained despite the fact that in the video of the arrests the police are much more of an impediment on traffic than the two candidates.

Stein and Honkala have been shut out, despite the fact that the Green Party ticket will be on an estimated 85 percent of ballots this election. The Commission on Presidential Debates stipulates that a candidate must garner at least 15 percent in national polls in order to participate, but national television exposure is a key factor in generating that kind of broad support. Hence, shutting out third-party candidates creates a cyclical suppression in which candidates can’t reach the 15 percent mark precisely because they are denied access to a large audience.

Members from an Occupy chapter in Georgia have joined forces with Atlanta police. The unlikely partnership emerged when Detective Jaqueline Barber was informed she faced eviction after falling behind on her medical bill payments (Barber has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cell cancer).

That’s when activists joined current and retired Atlanta police Monday for a demonstration.

“The police are in the 99 percent and when it comes down to their economic struggles, we’re going to be there to shine a light on those and organize around those,” said Tim Franzen. He and others who were involved with Occupy Atlanta are now part of a group called Occupy Our Homes ATL, which focuses on the housing crisis.

Hundreds of people gathered at a major Walmart distribution center Monday in Elwood, Illinois, to stand in solidarity with workers who have been on strike since mid-September in response to unsafe working conditions and unfair wages.

“No one should come to work and endure extreme temperatures, inhale dust and chemical residue, and lift thousands of boxes weighing up to 250 lbs with no support. Workers never know how long the work day will be—sometimes its two hours, sometimes its 16 hours. Injuries are common, as is discrimination against women and illegal retaliation against workers who speak up for better treatment,” Warehouse Workers for Justice states on its official website.

The discrimination aspect of this list of grievances includes widespread sexual harassment and intimidation of female warehouse workers, an epidemic largely ignored by the establishment media, even among individuals, such as The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, known for focusing on female worker equality and empowerment in other countries.