The Infectious Escalation of Occupy Oakland
Natalie W writes at Diatribe Media:
An unofficial count of 400 Occupy Oakland demonstrators were arrested Saturday, January 28, after being fired upon, beaten, kettled, and trapped by Oakland riot police.
The Occupy Oakland social movement is rooted in the lower-income, ethnically diverse Bay area city and has been a previous site of violent police repression. Oakland has been a nexus of social unrest long before the Occupation catalyzed it as an outlet for frustration.
Oakland boasts closing public schools, an annual median family income at $56,000 in 2008, and in 2010, it was listed as the fifth most dangerous in the US with a history of police brutality. With all of these simmering tensions, Occupy Oakland’s actions should not come as a surprise to anyone, least of all elected officials like Mayor Quan and Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan.
The Occupy movement is a global social demonstration aimed at overturning the interconnectivity of money/economic/political entitlement. In 2011, acting…
Journalists Under Fire in 2012
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Reporters Without Boarders released its 10th annual Press Freedom Index, which found that while 2011 may have been Time Magazine’s “Year of the Protester,” it was also the year of government crackdowns on journalists. The opening of the report reads:
“Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom.”
Rounding out the bottom of the list are countries like North Korea, Iran, Syria and China – all types of dictatorships with very tightly controlled state media. While Tunisia, the country which arguably sparked the Arab Spring rose 30 places in the RWB index, Egypt plummeted nearly 40 due to the military maintaining the dictatorial practices of former President Mubarak.
The United States, land of…
Indigenous Bolivians March Against Amazon Road
Photo: Isiborosecure.com
A large group of representatives from three native groups in Bolivia begin their march through 375 miles of land today in hopes of keeping a highway from being built through their land. Via NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America):
On August 15, representatives of three indigenous groups and their supporters will begin a 375-mile trek from Trinidad in the Bolivian lowlands to the highland capital of La Paz, to protest the government’s plan to build a highway through their ancestral homeland known as the TIPNIS (Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park). The march opens a new chapter in the increasingly conflictive relationship between leftist president Evo Morales and the social movements that brought him to power.
The TIPNIS is both a national park and a self-governing territory, that combines indigenous autonomy (granted under Bolivia’s 2009 Constitution) with environmental protection. Legal title to the land and resources in this 3,860 square mile preserve…
Tent City Erected By Protestors In Madison, WI
Hooverville in Portland, Oregon
Would you live in a tent to show that history repeats itself? Protesters opened ‘Walkerville’ tent city, much like the infamous ‘Hooverville’, in the middle of Madison on Saturday night. This is the most recent demonstration protesting against Governor Scott Walker’s budget plan. Dubuque Telegraph Herald reports:
Those against Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal are settling in for the long haul, pitching tents at Capitol Square.
WISC-TV reported Sunday that protesters are calling their tent city “Walkerville,” named after the “Hooverville” shantytowns set up during the Great Depression.
Overnight camping is being allowed along parts of Carroll and Mifflin streets. The protesters will have access to portable toilets and hand washing stations, and several businesses sell food in the area.
Protester Karen Tuerk said the budget is a war on working families and the middle class
[Continues at Dubuque Telegraph Herald]
