Occupy Congress Protesters Smoke Bomb White House

The number of bombs thrown at the White House by the Tea Party is still at zero.

WASHINGTON – The Secret Service was responding Tuesday night to an escalating protest that may have involved a smoke bomb being thrown over the White House fence.

An estimated 1,000 protesters have gathered. No arrests have been made, but authorities are on alert.

The tense scene outside the White House follows an earlier protest on the West Lawn of the Capitol, in which several hundred protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement decried the influence of corporate money in politics and voice myriad other grievances.

Organizers had touted the rally, known as Occupy Congress, as the largest national gathering of Occupy protesters to date and secured a permit that would have allowed up to 10,000 people to participate. By mid-afternoon, the protest appeared to have fallen far short of those goals.

Unions and liberals preparing to "AstroTurf" Occupy Congress

Why don't the Occupy the White House? That's where the real problem is.

(WaPo) — One of the enduring questions about Occupy Wall Street has been this: Can the energy unleashed by the movement be leveraged behind a concrete political agenda and push for change that will constitute a meaningful challenge to the inequality and excessive Wall Street influence highlighted by the protests?

A coalition of labor and progressive groups is about to unveil its answer to that question. Get ready for “Occupy Congress.”

The coalition — which includes unions like SEIU and CWA and groups like the Center for Community Change — is currently working on a plan to bus thousands of protesters from across the country to Washington, where they will congregate around the Capitol from December 5–9, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry tells me in an interview.

“Thousands of people have signed up to come to Capitol Hill during the first week in December,” Henry says, adding that protesters are invited to make their way to Washington on their own, too. “We’re figuring out buses and transportation now.”