A group of metalheads playing kazoos drowned out the hate-spreading 'Westboro Baptist Church' cult at the Virginia state capitol. I am proud of my home town. Read the rest

Several weeks ago, Ted Pilkey of Westford, Vermont installed this massive wooden middle finger sculpture on his lawn atop a 16-foot-pole. From Boston.com:

“I’m not trying to cause hate and animosity to the people who live in that town, because there’s very good people in that town,” the 54-year-old Westford native says of his fellow residents in the 2,000-person town. “All the people are very good people.”

With the exception, Pelkey says, of the Westford Selectboard, Development Review Board, and other town leaders, who have blocked his efforts to get a permit to build the 8,000-square-foot garage, so he could move his truck repair and monofilament recycling businesses in nearby Swanton to his own property.

Officials say Pelkey’s applications have fallen short of the town’s standards, but he thinks they’re biased against him...

Although the structure is visible from a state highway, it is outside of the State Right of Way and not within our jurisdiction,” Jacqui DeMen, a spokeswoman for the agency, told Boston.com in an email. “The structure does not meet the statutory definition of ‘sign’ and thus can’t be regulated under the Vermont Billboard Law.”

Perhaps Pelkey was inspired by a similar sculpture outside the Italian stock exchange in Milan.

Read the rest

Monday is the end of the comment period for a sweeping National Park Service proposal that will have a dramatic effect on the ability of Americans to protest in sight of their government. Read the rest

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the political opposition who showed up in Russia's streets was old and grey: people who had lived through the Soviet era and then watched as their state industries and national wealth were looted by oligarchs, and who wanted an equitable system with broadly shared prosperity. Read the rest

Elin Ersson is a 21 year old Swedish social work student who boarded a plane at Gothenburg airport yesterday and refused to sit down until an Afghan asylum-seeker who was to be deported that day was offloaded and allowed to remain in Sweden. Read the rest

In times of trouble, people want to do something, but as activist Kat Calvin points out, make sure your time and resources are spent wisely. Otherwise you end up enriching grifters: Read the rest

She picks a Mexican restaurant. The irony is not lost on anyone.

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We see these lawmakers representing the NRA, and not their constituents. We see our “leaders” making excuses and refusing to act. On Saturday, they’ll see US. pic.twitter.com/7OGttnRSsz

— March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 21, 2018

America will be marching to end gun violence on Saturday, March 24. #MarchForOurLives. “Have you registered to vote? RSVP’d for the march? Signed the petition? You can do it all at marchforourlives.com.”

We see these lawmakers representing the NRA, and not their constituents. We see our “leaders” making excuses and refusing to act. On Saturday, they’ll see US. pic.twitter.com/7OGttnRSsz

— March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 21, 2018

Need a poster to march with on Saturday? @amplifierart has some great ones that you can download for free at https://t.co/GQUhEsgYcT📷: @kalakaricrew pic.twitter.com/14YX3d4S39

— March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 22, 2018

🚨 FREE @lyft rides for #MarchForOurLives this Saturday in DC and 49 other sibling marches, but you have to RSVP to claim: https://t.co/EJpyRI4aHX

— March For Our Lives (@AMarch4OurLives) March 22, 2018

Read the rest

After the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students at MDI High School in Bar Harbor, Maine were scheduled to have a routine lock-down drill, in which students practice how to behave if their school is the site of a similar mass shooting; these drills teach children to sacrifice themselves by distracting the shooter before they are murdered in order to give other students a few more seconds during which the police might arrive and kill the shooter. Read the rest

Enjoy the dark (very dark) comedy of this new Blondie video for the track "Doom or Destiny," starring Joan Jett and Debbie Harry anchoring an apocalyptic newscast about global warming, nuclear war, and, of course, President Trump.

From Rolling Stone:

Blondie guitarist Chris Stein – who co-wrote "Doom or Destiny" with Harry – likened the clip to "punk-style protest." "In trying times we try harder," he said. "Politics have become the new pop culture phenomena, but it seems the current landscape of music videos has so little to do with true protest or some kind of social message. It can be truthful, but irreverent, fun and funny."

Meanwhile, director Rob Roth hoped the visual would "represent a spectrum of female fierceness," calling the end product "a 'fuck you' to what's going on in the world and a call to arms for women everywhere."

Read the rest

This short interview with Homer Venters from Physicians for Human Rights, recorded in May at the the Right to Protest conference in Buenas Aires, is a succinct and important summary of the lie of "less-lethal" crowd-control weapons that kill and maim protesters, from tear-gas burns on lung-tissue to lethal, point-blank rubber bullet usage. Read the rest

Donald Trump is the least popular president to serve in US history, so it's no surprise that the call for mass, "J20 demonstrations" at his inauguration would be answered by massive crowds. Read the rest

Protesters against ICE's campaign of mass deportations were treated to a bizarre public stunt by Portland, OR police, who put them in isolation hoods and sound-muffling ear-protectors reminiscent of the treatment described by Gitmo prisoners and other survivors of US torture. The police were attempting separate the protesters from the bonds they used to stick themselves together and the measures were nominally taken to protect the protesters' hearing and vision from police power-tools. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

A bunch of racist bigots billing themselves as "Alt-Right" demonstrators plan to invade San Francisco's Crissy Field this weekend. Locals are planning to leave their dog poop all over the field, just like it was Paris.

Don't worry, oh ye concern troll! The counter-protestors plan to return and clean up the fecal detritus shortly after the neo-Nazi fuckers are done marching in crap.

If you've got a dog who needs to poop, and you are close to Crissy Field...

Nazis, I hate these guys. Read the rest

Protests are boiling over across Poland after the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) passed legislation that would allow the government to force the country's judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court, to retire, allowing them to appoint new, party-friendly judges in their place. Update: Thankfully, the president vetoed the legislation. Read the rest

On Wednesday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed HB1123, a new "trespass" law that declared an immediate "state of emergency" allowing prosecutors to charge protesters with felonies for "trespassing" on any property containing a "critical infrastructure facility," impose fines of up to $10,000 for acts that "damage, vandalize, deface, impede or inhibit operations of the facility", and fines of up to $100,000 or up to ten years in prison for "tampering" with the facility. Read the rest

Rogue archivist Rick Prelinger writes, "Oakland students planned to paint a mural on a dark freeway underpass in their city. The project is stalled because Caltrans asserts copyright to murals on its property. The details are a bit sketchy, but there's a petition here. Read the rest