Photo via whipartist, taken October 27, 2011 at Occupy Oakland.

Today my first piece for the Atlantic went live, which is pretty exciting. Please check that out. And then hire me to write long in-depth pieces all the time because goddamn do I love doing this work even though it means a life of poverty.

Some exciting work developments on the Occupy Oakland front. I was thrilled to do this piece for GOOD tracking the first six weeks of Oakland’s occupations. And yesterday my first Oakland field report documentary for Citizen Radio aired (starts around the 18 minute mark). Yes, I’m making radio again!

More written work is in the pipeline, big announcements, etc, the usual.

I was arrested while reporting on Occupy Oakland on Thursday at about 1 am, wearing my press pass. My arresting officer acknowledged that I was press, and his officer friend even recognized me and knew my work (if you’re reading this, sir I would sure like to interview you!). I had a meeting set with the OPD press information officer for 8 hours later to obtain my official OPD press credentials. When I told this to the cops, they replied, “Do you want us to call her and tell her you’ll be late?”

I was detained for 15 hours and ultimately charged with the same misdemeanor as other demonstrators and NLG legal observers: PC 409, failure to leave the scene of a riot. Our arraignment dates are a month from now, and we were explicitly warned against returning to the plaza in the meantime. As I told ABC7, I feel like the OPD does, I think: confused.

You know it’s bad when Occupy Veterans is sending you personal supportive messages. This is a crappy video that I took while trying to run to safety — instead I ran into the kettle.

If you are interested in the whole saga, swim up my Twitter stream. The Oakland Police Department arrested 103 people that night, some of whom were not involved in Occupy at all. 95 received the PC 409 misdemeanor citation, but interim OPD Chief Howard Jordan told the New York Times that the group of arrestees were “generally anarchists and provocateurs.”

I am not the first journalist arrested while covering Occupy, and I doubt I’ll be the last — but I’m not clear on if other journalists are being charged with crimes, or arrested and released. Any information appreciated.

I’ll have a full piece about this clusterfuck at Alternet on Monday. I’m also still fundraising at Spot.Us for my illustrated history of Occupy Oakland (buy original art!). I may have an awesome new publisher for that — more details next week.

New comic for the SF Appeal, this time on California’s Prop H8. I enjoyed drawing those grave-dancers.

for my series at The Rumpus.

for my series at The Rumpus.

I’ll be at SPX this year! It’s my first time and I’m pretty excited to see the Bethesda sights. And I’ll have a new mini-comic (um, if I finish inking…). This is a previewy page (click through to get the bigger version). But unfortunately, this means the longer book is getting postponed. Well, unfortunately for you (maybe), but fortunately for my metacarpals (definitely). Speaking of which, I’m going to stop typing now.

I went down to City Hall yesterday to watch democracy in action (thank god for activist judges in the face of activist intolerance). I was hardly the only one around with a camera. The real characters were the ones passing out bouquets, the guy with the trumpet playing a spritely little tune for every emerging new couple, and the many, many ministers for on-the-spot hire. I imagine the parade is still continuing today, though maybe with a little less SFPD protective detail.

Personally I’ve always been a proponent of everyone abandoning the antiquated system of marriage — not because I’m polyamorous, but because that’s the only way I think any sort of equality is really going to come to the whole monogamy-and-tax-breaks thing.

But all the pretty lesbians warmed my cold, cold heart… A little.

Apparently the FBI is currently looking for paid informants to infiltrate that hot bed of political action… the vegan potluck! This actually sounds like a dream job, except for the whole “only getting paid upon someone’s arrest” thing. (But I’m wondering how the freaking feds are finding these potlucks when I’m stuck home, cupcake-less.)

Anyway, I really think this plan needs some reworking. I guess the Bush administration isn’t (yet) tracking SuperVegan — those guys really aren’t kidding when they say all they do is eat and gossip.

My father is on a U.S. State Department-arranged speaking/democracy propaganda tour of universities in China right now. This is what the Q&A was like:

Do your cartoons hurt your personal relationships with the politicians you draw?
No, I don’t have personal relationships with the people I draw.

Do you worry that your drawings will hurt the reputation of someone you have drawn?
No, if one of my cartoons hurts the reputation of a politician that I am criticizing, then I am pleased. (Sometimes the crowd murmurs when I say this. It doesn’t seem to be what they expect me to say.)

Do you ever draw cartoons that are supportive of China?
No, I don’t draw cartoons that support anything. I just criticize. Supportive cartoons are lousy cartoons.

Now that you have visited China, and have learned more about China, will you be drawing cartoons that support China?
Probably not.

He and my mom were supposed to head to Chengdu today but of course, post-quake, they were re-routed. Now they’re spending some extra time in Harbin, “the Moscow of China,” where they still have ample Internet access for IMing while I Google child prodigies — that is, until sight-seeing resumes after breakfast. “We’re going to the tiger sanctuary today, where visitors throw live chickens to the tigers.”

So I guess they’re having fun.