The forces of Occupy Wall Street, splintered and faded in the aftermath of their 2011 demonstrations, are getting...back together to boost Bernie Sanders ahead of next week's critical New York primary.

Nearly five years since Occupy was evicted from Zuccotti Park, blocks from the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan, a coalition of organizers, labor leaders and progressive activists who lined up under the banner of "the 99 percent" are renewing their efforts in pursuit of a more traditional cause: Getting voters to the polls on April 19. That begins with traditional canvassing, but will extend to what is expected to be a large pro-Sanders, Occupy-inspired march on Saturday in Manhattan.

Despite the inner tumult and outside mockery, aspects of the animating message behind the Occupy protests -- which eventually spanned more than 1,000 locations across the country -- have become part of the current political discussion.

"Occupy Wall Street helped create the political climate that helped Bernie's message to resonate so widely, simply by shining a spotlight on issues of Wall Street greed and income inequality," Sanders spokesman Karthik Ganapathy told CNN.The Sanders campaign is now seeing various elements of the old Occupy coalition working together to build momentum ahead of what could be a make-or-break contest in the primary battle against Hillary Clinton.

"We've been able to tap into the energy of (Occupy) and channel that into something tangible and concrete and forward-looking," Ganapathy said. "They're here [working on the campaign]. I see them, I see a lot of them volunteering, making phone calls, knocking on doors. It's a natural fit."

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that he welcomed a spat with several high-profile American CEOs who criticized his rhetoric. Sanders slammed Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt over their recent criticism of his populist economic agenda.

"I don't want the support of McAdam, Immelt and their friends in the billionaire class. I welcome their contempt," Sanders tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. Earlier this week, Immelt penned an editorial in The Washington Post disputing Sanders' claim that GE avoids paying taxes, a practice the Vermont senator said was "destroying the moral fabric" of America.

The candidate has long sided with the Verizon union workers in their dispute with management. One of the groups involved in the walkout, the Communications Workers of America, endorsed Sanders last year after he appeared on a picket line outside of a Verizon store in Manhattan.

The trouble is, her evolution has been slow, halting and grudging (even after making that “done deal” commitment on fossil fuel extraction, for instance, she’s tried to walk it back). And now, with the New York primary looming, she’s in an uncomfortable spot, because New York has been ground zero in the war on fracking. Activists pulled off an almost impossible feat, using inspired and dogged organizing to force Gov. Cuomo to ban fracking in the Empire State.

At least on climate change, slow and evolutionary change is another way of giving up. Because the world is changing so damned fast. The same week that Hillary was laughing at young folks, scientists told us that this winter had broken every temperature record, that new Antarctic data showed the sea level was likely to rise much faster than anticipated, and that record-hot oceans had put a third of the world’s coral reefs on “death watch” this year alone. In energy terms, we need a revolution; slow and steady loses this race.

But mostly it’s because there’s never been any need for his positions on these issues to evolve. Keystone? “No” in September 2011, not in September 2015. He co-sponsored the bill to stop fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Fracking? Nothing complicated, just a simple, “No.”

His history, in other words, is an asset. Which is odd, because he’s the older candidate — were he elected, he’d be our oldest President. But if you’ve said the same things for decades, when those things were popular and when they weren’t, it’s much easier to get the future right. Young people have done enough research to figure that out.

A newly released GAI [Government Accountability Institute] timeline reveals how Bill Clinton bagged $1.8 million for 10 speeches between Nov. 2008 and mid-2011 funded by one of the largest shareholders in the Keystone XL pipeline, TD Bank, which held a $1.6 billion investment in the deal.

During this period, then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton made critical decisions related to the Keystone XL pipeline’s advancement. Hillary’s "critical decisions" amounted to putting off any decision on the Keystone Pipeline. Which is something the environmentalists could not understand. But delaying the decision allowed Bill and eventually Hillary herself, as well as the rest of the Democrats, to continue to collect donations from both sides of the issue for as long as possible. Which is something Hillary then did in spades.

Her $1.6 million added to Bill’s $1.8 million means that Keystone Pipeline investors put at least $3.4 million dollars right into the pockets of the Clintons’. (And not their foundation.)

But, that’s about where it stops. Such is why Hillary Clinton’s supporters are placated by the front-runner’s plan to reform campaign finance. Here are the three basic elements of her proposal:

1) Increasing voter access.
2) Increasing transparency by requiring corporations to disclose their political donations by way of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
3) A pledge that overturning Citizens United is her litmus test for SCOTUS nominees, and fighting for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision “if necessary.”

While these might sound great, they amount to very little in terms of reform — and I will explain why....(click link below for the why). Hillary Clinton has not made campaign finance reform a priority of her presidential campaign. When asked what she would tackle in her first hundred days in office, the former Secretary did not even mention it.

It is also understandable that Clinton isn’t even talking about publicly-financed elections considering that 83 percent of her direct campaign funds come from large donors.