Protest

‘Ads Against Apartheid’ Is Going National

August 27, 2014 Annie Robbins, www.mondoweiss.net Organize! Israel, Palestine, Protest

Ads Against Apartheid (AAA) is going national with a their “ONE WORD” campaign, and not just in subways. News of their June campaign in Boston swept social media like a tsunami and the organization got flooded with messages from people all over the world lauding the ads with praise. Many inquiring how to get the ads in their town, cities, transit hubs, and even in their classrooms! AAA co-founder Richard Colbath-Hess told Mondoweiss the response has been “overwhelming.” The ads feature one word per ad – HOMELESS, VIOLENCE, and STOLEN– each representing an aspect of Israel’s unrelenting injustice towards Palestinians. AAA recently announced they were placing billboards in 8-10 major US cities by late 2014 or early 2015, including New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. Sami Awad, Executive Director of Holy Land Trust (HLT), has joined AAA’s impressive advisory board. In conversation with Mondoweiss, Awad called the campaign a “game changer”: Americans for the most part know very little about what is happening today in the Holy Land.

Protests Intensify Over Police Shooting Death Of Michael Brown

August 26, 2014 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Ferguson, Police, Protest, Race

The Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. reverberated chants and cries Saturday night as over a thousand protested the police shooting of Michael Brown. Brown an unarmed Black youth, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. It marked the forth-major local protest in the District since the shooting death two weeks ago. The National Black United Front and the Answer Coalition were among the groups organizing the march. Among their demands were the prosecution of Darren Wilson, an end to police brutality, a stop to racial profiling, and a review of the demilitarization of local police forces across the country. The protestors’ objective was to shut down the major economic center and to force Chinatown businesses to focus on injustices of police brutality against minorities. “We need to change our spending habits,” said Kymone Freeman of We Act Radio. Freeman cited several corporations, which contributed to a legal fund that was set up to raise money for the officer who shot Michael Brown. “We need to identify targets we can hit in the pocketbook,” Freeman said.

Burger King Fans Call For Boycott After Tax Dodge

August 26, 2014 Jillian Berman and Alexander C. Kaufman, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Burger King, Canada, Protest, Taxes

Burger King is getting whopped over its plan to avoid U.S. taxes by fleeing to Canada. People flooded the fast-food chain’s Facebook page on Monday with threats of a boycott after the company announced talks to merge with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons. The combined company would be headquartered in Canada. Burger King is just the latest American company to attempt a so-called tax inversion -- where a bigger U.S. company buys a smaller foreign firm in a country with a lower tax rate, renounces its U.S. corporate citizenship and then reincorporates in the other nation. Politicians and pundits have said the moves amount to little more than unpatriotic ploys to avoid paying taxes. The corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 35 percent, the highest in the world. Canada's is about 15 percent. "Move to Canada to avoid paying taxes and I will never darken the door of a Burger King again," Mike Gee, of Magnolia, Arkansas, wrote in a comment. "Does corporate greed in this country ever end?" Radina Russell, a Burger King spokeswoman, declined to comment. Taxes aren't Tim Hortons' only appeal to the Miami-based burger chain. The company sells a lot of coffee and doughnuts, and Burger King has struggled to compete with rivals McDonald's and Taco Bell in the fast-food war over breakfast. It's not clear how much the move to Canada would reduce tax costs on the combined company. But the deal would allow it to avoid paying double taxes on profits earned abroad, even though the company would still pay U.S. taxes on domestic sales.

Protestors Lock Selves To Pipeline Trucks

August 26, 2014 Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands, www.michigancats.org Resist! Civil Disobedience, Michigan, Protest, Tar Sands

At about 7:30am this morning, two men locked their necks with bicycle U-locks to a pipeline construction truck, immobilizing it, as it was exiting a Precision pipeline storage yard at 3565 East Lakeville Road. This action has resulted in a back-up of trucks that have been blocked from exiting the pipe yard. At the time of this writing, there is a police presence around the two persons locked to the truck as well as dozens of other supporting protestors. Precision Pipeline, who runs the pipeline storage facility, is hired by Enbridge to expand Line 6B. In 2010, Line 6B ruptured in Marshall, MI spilling over 1 million gallons of toxic tar sands and diluents into Talmadge Creek, impacting 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River. Four years later, Enbridge states that the Kalamazoo River is the cleanest it has ever been while dragging its feet in clean-up efforts. Simultaneously, Enbridge states that the river will never be completely clean, and has meanwhile been expeditiously expanding the 6B pipeline system to carry a higher capacity of tar sands oil. Acting to disrupt Precision Pipeline, 20-year-old Duncan Tarr and 21-year-old Dylan Ochala-Gorka, both Michigan residents and organizers with a group called the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands (MICATS), demand a halt to Enbridge’s expansion of line 6B as well as restitution for those still suffering from effects of the 2010 tar sands disaster.

Anti-Israel Protesters Occupy World’s Largest Security Co.

August 23, 2014 Boruch Shubert, www.jpupdates.com Resist! Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Protest

According to a news report by Ha’aretz, a group of pro-Palestinian activists briefly occupied the offices of global security company G4S in Portland, Oregon Thursday, to protest the firm’s affiliation with the Israeli prison system. According to the International Middle East Media Center, activists managed to occupy the company’s office for a brief period in an effort to force its closure for the day, before they were removed from the premises by security. United Kingdom-based G4S, which is the world’s largest security company in terms of its annual revenue, oversees operations in approximately 125 countries, including 11 Arab states. Members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Portland went after G4S because it has contracts to “provide equipment and services to Israeli prisons at which Palestinian political prisoners, including child prisoners, are detained and mistreated,” according to the group. They also criticized G4S for providing “equipment and services to checkpoints, illegal settlements and businesses within these settlements.” Although G4S in fact announced in early June that it would terminate all of its Israeli prison contracts within the next three years, the anti-Israel activists insist that the company has made similar promises in the past without fulfilling them.

Blockade The Boat At Tacoma And Seattle Ports

August 23, 2014 Block The Boat, www.blocktheboatnw.com Resist! Israel, Palestine, Protest

When the “Zim Chicago” enters the Port of Tacoma on (estimated) August 22nd and the Port of Seattle on (estimated) August 25, we will conduct blockades to prevent the unloading of its cargo, starting early and lasting all day. Estimated dates of arrival are subject to change, and we will continue to give accurate updates on this website. We will also give exact meeting places for the actions in the coming days. Keep checking! These actions are economic sanctions against Zim Shipping, Israel’s largest shipping company, in response to the current siege of Gaza and the ongoing occupation of Palestine. Any international commerce that profits Israeli companies is oppressing Palestinians. Israel could not continue its occupation and genocide without economic and military support of the United States government. To help end this oppression we must block that support in every way we can. The toll of “Operation Protective Edge” is almost 1,900 Gazans killed (nearly all civilians), 31% of them children, and almost 10,000 injured. We must act in solidarity with those in Palestine who live under occupation and are facing down genocide. Let’s refuse to let Israeli ships use our ports! Blockade til they go away! Oakland, CA will block a Zim ship on August 16th. In Seattle we shut down the Port for a day in December of 2011 — we can do it again and again. Blockades can and must happen everywhere there is a port, as a contribution to the goal of the complete collapse of the economic base of Israeli occupation.

Oakland Protesters Hold Mirrors Up To Police

August 23, 2014 Nadia Prupis, www.commondreams.org Resist! Ferguson, Police, Protest

Demonstrators in Oakland, California marching in solidarity with Ferguson, Missouri on Wednesday held up mirrors in the faces of police officers as a creative protest tactic. "I was holding up the mirror because I wanted the police to just look at themselves," one protester, Nichola Torbett, told KPIX 5. "Especially if they were about to take some kind of action just so they had to acknowledge what they were doing." Demarco Robinson, who also took part in the demonstration, said, "We want that person to look at themselves so that they can realize they’re not a badge. They don’t have to follow the system that they don’t agree with." Peace soldier in Oakland supports #nonviolence & #Ferguson by holding a mirror in front of an #overdressed officer. * pic.twitter.com/pqkhTSBbwD — Ferguson News (@Ferguson_News) August 21, 2014

Detroit Water Brigade To Gather Water From River

August 22, 2014 Staff, http://detroitwaterbrigade.org/ Resist! Detroit, Protest, Water

The Detroit Water Brigade will gather on the Detroit Riverfront this Friday at 5pm in front of the International Underground Railroad Memorial statue in order to fetch public water from the Detroit river. “Water is a public commons that belongs to all of us,” said Detroit Water Brigade Spokeswoman and Creative Director AtPeace Makita. “People need water to live, and Detroit is surrounded by it: 21% of the world’s surface freshwater sits in the Great Lakes. We are going to the river to remind ourselves where our water comes from.” The Detroit Riverwalk is technically private property owned by Riverfront Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of General Motors, Inc., and managed by the Detroit Riverwalk Conservancy, a 501(c)3 non-profit. All organized events must be approved "between January 1 and November 1 the year before the event will be held", and must be insured, have sponsors approved beforehand, and be catered exclusively by RiverWalk Cafe/Diamond Hospitality. The Brigade will have legal observers on hand to ensure that our right to informally fetch water from the river is upheld.

The False Narrative Of Calm In Ferguson

August 21, 2014 Anne Meador, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Ferguson, Police, Protest

If you believe mainstream media, Ferguson turned a corner Tuesday night. The riots are settling down, and justice in the form of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrived on Wednesday. “As Tension Eases on Ferguson’s Streets, Focus Turns to Investigation,” reads the New York Times headline. “No teargas used in relatively calm nighttime protests,” says the Guardian. “No bullets, no teargas mark ‘turning point’ in Ferguson,” proclaims MSNBC. These major media outlets, among others, parroted Missouri police captain Ron Johnson’s talking point from his late-night press conference, that an alleged de-escalation of conflict marks a “turning point.” Peaceful, rationale people—with the aid of law enforcement—are winning out over “the agitators, the criminals,” who are “embedded” in their midst. Following another shooting of an African-American man on Tuesday by police not far from Ferguson, this assertion is nothing short of Orwellian. It is intended to pacify the citizens of Ferguson and justify the violence inflicted on them.

Ferguson Deploys New Protest Control Tactics

August 21, 2014 Eric Blair, www.activistpost.com Educate! Journalism, Militarization, Police, Protest, Surveillance

It seems like the police state is using protests in Ferguson as a testing ground for all of their crowd-control weapons. Many are obvious like the curfew enforced by platoons of soldiers, armored tanks mounted by snipers, stun, tear and smoke grenades, no-fly zone, sound cannons, and designated free speech zones and media zones (apparently they're different now). However, some weapons are less obvious like technology to kill livestream feeds during questionable police activity. And that's precisely what happened last night according to Ferguson's most prolific livestreamer Argus Radio. The GIF above, taken from the final seconds of Argus Radio feed from last night, shows the moment the police bum rush the crowd and create mass panic in an attempt to catch someone. Moments later the livestream feed was cut and registered a network error, according to Argus Radio. The Argus livestream has been filming the protests non-stop for the last week manned by volunteer University of Missouri post-grad student Mustafa Hussein.

Six Arrests Made As Protests In Ferguson Stay Small, Peaceful

August 21, 2014 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, www.stltoday.com Resist! Ferguson, Police, Protest

Six arrests were made by officers patrolling the streets of Ferguson late Wednesday and early today, Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson said. Speaking at a brief press conference at 1:30 a.m., he said the 11th night of protests was fairly calm although an officer was hit by a bottle at one point. He said the officer was uninjured. Johnson credited the officers as well as the "law-abiding men and women and teenagers of Ferguson" and the large contingent of clergy and church elders who came to the streets Wednesday night for keeping the protest in check. He also said the protesters were a quieter group. "We didn't have as many of the agitators," Johnson said. He said no fires were set, no one was shot and no guns were confiscated. The officers did not use smoke, tear gas or pepper spray on anyone, unlike in some past nights when the protests turned violent. Johnson did not detail the charges in all of the arrests, but he said some were for failure to disperse.

Moral Monday Movement Expands To 12 States For Week Of Protests

August 21, 2014 Samantha Lachman, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Law, Moral Mondays, Protest

Nearly 51 years ago this week, Martin Luther King, Jr. exhorted the 250,000-strong March on Washington audience to "go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed." Leaders of the "Forward Together Moral Monday" movement said on a press call Tuesday they are putting King's words to practice by expanding the movement beyond its origins in North Carolina for a "Moral Week of Action" in 12 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin. The week will focus on a different social justice theme each day, starting with labor rights and fair wage issues this Friday, followed by education, criminal justice, equal protection under the law (such as LGBT rights and immigration status), women's rights, environmental justice and health care coverage. The movement's North Carolina chapter, composed of the state's NAACP and a variety of other groups, says it will hold voter registration canvasses each day after marching to the state capitol in Raleigh, culminating in a voting rights rally on Aug. 28 to commemorate the March on Washington anniversary.

Residents Demand New Jobs, Transparency On Strip Mine

August 21, 2014 Justice To Justice, www.justicetojustice.com Resist! Appalachia, Jobs, Mining, Protest

In the pre-dawn rain, members of the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS) waited to deliver a citizen mine inspection request letter to workers at the foot of an A&G Coal Corp. surface mine in Appalachia, VA. The strip mine on Looney Ridge of Black Mountain, above the community of Inman, was the source of the boulder that killed three-year-old Jeremy Davidson 10 years ago today1. The mine was recently cited for bond forfeiture by the Virginia Department of Mines Minerals and Energy2. Local residents are concerned that the mine, and many others controlled by billionaire Jim Justice, continues to be out of compliance for required reclamation and reforestation. The community group is asking that Jim Justice and the VA DMME allow for regular citizen mine inspections to ensure that Justice is in compliance with the law, and applying the best available reclamation techniques on operations like this one. The group has previously asked for citizen inspections of this mine, as allowed by SMCRA, but been denied. The Wise County residents hoped to meet the morning shift at 5:30 this morning, before delivering the same mine inspection request to the DMME. By 7:00 AM, workers had still not arrived, and so the group left their letter behind a band of caution tape in front of the entrance. The letter can be found at JusticeToJustice.com, or below.

Autopsy In Case Of Ezell Ford Put On Hold

August 20, 2014 Matt Ferner, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! California, Police, Protest, Violence

The Los Angeles Police Department has delayed the release of a pending autopsy report for Ezell Ford, the 25-year-old unarmed black man with mental illness who an officer fatally shot last week in a South L.A. neighborhood. "Pending further investigative and forensic analysis, the LAPD Force Investigation Division investigators have requested that The Los Angeles County Coroner place an investigative hold on the pending autopsy report," read an LAPD press release issued Monday. LAPD Commander Andrew Smith told Southern California public radio station KPCC that investigative holds are common in cases that are currently ongoing and and in active investigations, in order to keep witness testimony from being tainted. “They could use information from the autopsy to give credibility to their story,” Smith said. Ed Winter, the assistant chief of investigation at the coroner's office, told The Huffington Post that he didn't know how long the hold would last. The delay on the Ford autopsy report comes after two autopsy reports were released regarding the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson. The autopsy revealed Brown was shot six times.

Amnesty International Comes To Ferguson

August 20, 2014 Amnesty International, www.amnestyusa.org Organize! Ferguson, Human Rights, Militarization, Police, Protest

On August 9, Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year old, was shot dead by a six-year veteran of the Ferguson police force. The next day, the community organized protests condemning the actions of the police and demanding to know the name of the officer who shot and killed Michael. Those actions continue still, a week later. The day after the shooting, I sent a text to my colleague at 3:30 AM. It read, “We need to go to Ferguson.” Later that week, I was on a plane, leading the Amnesty International USA human rights delegation to Ferguson, Missouri. Our goal: to observe police and protester activity, gather testimony, meet with officials, and offer support to the community. Importantly, our delegation also included organizers who supported local leaders in training community members on methods of nonviolent protest. On the plane, I read everything I could find about the situation in Ferguson, and spent time reflecting about community, solidarity, and intention. My heart broke as I thought about Michael Brown, the plans he had for his future, the pain his family and community feel at his loss, and the outrage the residents of Ferguson feel after the police harassment and intimidation of a grieving community.

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