“#BreakingNews an SUV just plowed through protesters on 42nd street in #manhattan Still assessing injuries if any. More on @NY1 #blacklivesmatter #nycprotest more on @NY1,” tweeted NY1 news reporter Ruschell Boone [@RuschellBoone] at 10:19pm New York Time. Read the rest
He seems eager for violence.
Yes, now Trump is personally threatening protesters with violent harm. It's very presidential. Read the rest
On Wednesday during a "Justice for George Floyd" protest, a late-night dance party broke out in downtown Oakland. Thousands of masked people took to the streets in this peaceful past-curfew street fête.
After several nights of violent confrontations with the police & the announcement by Minn Attorney General Keith Ellis of the elevation to 2nd degree murder for Derek Chauvin and aiding & abetting 2nd degree murder for the officers who were silent, Oakland responds to the City's curfew with a dance party. #Justice4GeorgeFloyd
Day 6 of Oakland #GeorgeFloyd protest: Oakland going dumb. 3 hours past curfew. pic.twitter.com/ygY87qCnfB
— Sarah Belle Lin (@SarahBelleLin) June 4, 2020
Also, people really miss dancing. pic.twitter.com/5A007k8ge2
— Shane Bauer (@shane_bauer) June 4, 2020
screengrab via Robb Benson Read the rest
“There is a new movement being born right now.
A movement against hatred. And the elements of that movement includes racism, which traces its origin back 400 years, antisemitism, sexism, and xenophobia.”
Watch this incredible comment by longtime CNN anchor and news presenter Bernard Shaw. Read the rest
Fifty years ago today at Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard gunned down four students and wounded nine more during a demonstration against the invasion of Cambodia. The tragedy inspired Neil Young to write the epic social commentary "Ohio" for his band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. (Video below.)
Above is the Isley Brothers's masterful and moving medley of "Ohio" and Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun" from their 1971 album Givin' It Back.
If you don't know, now you know.
From John Lombardi's coverage of the Kent State Massacre in Rolling Stone's June 11th, 1970 issue:
Read the rest“A lot of the Guards were young and they looked scared,” [24-year-old Howard] Ruffner remembers, and then some kid with a black flag was down in front of them trying to get the students to charge. “Kill the pigs! The pigggs!!” he was screaming and the gas blew in clouds. But this time the students were picking up the canisters and throwing them back, and it didn’t even matter that the gas wasn’t having much effect, was in fact blowing up and over the heads of the combatants in the strong wind and back toward the football field where it managed to burn the eyes and lungs of some people who wanted nothing to do with any of this, including a blind student and his girlfriend who were crawling along the Spring grass in panic, digging at their tearing eyes and vomiting. A lot of kids who had just been standing around watching began to yell then, and everything got louder.
The Guards had run out of tear gas and were retreating up the hill, to the left of Taylor Hall, when some of the students began to throw rocks.
'CANCEL THE RENT' 'SEND MORE VENTILATORS' 'STOP ICE RAIDS'
NYC-based political projection collective 'The Illuminator' staged a large-scale public projection in Manhattan on Saturday night to make several demands on local, state, and federal governments during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Read the rest
The climactic moment when The Pentagon levitated into the air, ending war.
This historic moment begs the question: "Was Daniel Ellsberg's moral evolution due, in part, to him being inside the building when surrounded by thousands of chanting peacemakers?"
This concludes the three part Levitation of The Pentagon (Read Part One and Parts Two)
From John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall.
It's been a while since we talked about Nicaragua, but the nefarious crap that's been going on in the Central American nation for more than a year hasn't stopped. In fact, according to the United Nation's human rights office, things are most certainly getting worse.
From Reuters:
The U.N. human rights office on Tuesday criticized the arrest of 16 anti-government protesters in Nicaragua accused of arms trafficking, saying that the charges appeared to have been “trumped-up.”
On Monday, Nicaraguan authorities said the 16 detainees included student protesters such as Nicaraguan and Belgian national Amaya Coppens, who has been arrested previously.
Nicaraguan police also said the protesters were suspected of planning to carry out terrorist attacks in the Central American country, which has been roiled by demonstrations against the administration of President Daniel Ortega since April last year.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman in Geneva for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters the arrests looked like an attempt to silence criticism of the government.
So yeah, same greasy tricks, different year and people. President/ gutter trash dictator Daniel Ortega and his Vice President/power hungry despot/wife Rosario Murillo have been using their nation's military, police and masked militia-types to terrorize those opposed to their government's abusive policies for over a year now.
Violence and incarceration have been used as ways to shut up members of Nicaragua's judiciary, students protestors, intellectuals, members of the media and anyone else willing to stand up to the Ortega government. It's believed that at least 320 civilians have been murdered since protests, sparked by Ortega's plans to screw with his citizen's social security system, started in April of 2018. Read the rest
Part Two of "LEVITATION OF THE PENTAGON" — Concluded Next Week
Read Part One: Applying for a Permit to Exorcise the Pentagon of Evil Spirits, Levitating It Ten Feet Off the Ground
From John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall.
Abbie Hoffman and Martin Carey arrive at The Pentagon to do a literal hand-count on how many protestors will be needed to encircle the building for a protest. On the way out they apply for, and receive, a permit to initiate an Exorcism to rid the base of its evil demons.
Part one of "LEVITATION OF THE PENTAGON" — Continued Next Week
From John Wilcock, New York Years, by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall.
Article 31 of the Russian constitution guarantees the right to peaceful political assembly, which is why Russian opposition protesters like to wave copies of the constitution around as Putin's goon-squads descend on them to dole out savage beatings and mass arrests. Read the rest
When the Chinese politburo gave itself the right to veto nominees for Hong Kong elections in 2016, it ensured that any future legislature on the supposedly independent island would be a puppet regime, its electors literally beholden to Beijing for their office; and by 2019, the puppet regime of Carrie Lam began to deconstruct Hong Kong's independence by introducing the "extradition bill," which would allow Beijing to demand that political dissidents be rendered to the Chinese mainland for show-trials and arbitrary detention. Read the rest
In early June, protesters surged into Hong Kong's streets to protest a change to the country's extradition rules that would allow the Chinese state to demand the extradition of political dissidents to the mainland; as the protests grew, Hong Kong's puppet government had no choice but to withdraw its proposal -- but that wasn't enough, and millions of people poured into the streets, demanding the resignation of administrator Connie Lam and the release of imprisoned demonstrators. Read the rest
Hong Kong's 2016 Umbrella Revolution saw weeks of mass protests over a change to nomination rules for the city's ruling council, in which the central government in Beijing arrogated to itself the right to decide who could be on the ballot (Boss Tweed: "I don't care who gets to do the voting, so long as I get to do the nominating"). Read the rest
Just look at it. (Thanks, Matthew!) Read the rest
This morning, the British Transport Police has ordered Virgin Media to switch off the wifi to some undisclosed London Underground stations in a bid to make it harder for climate protesters to organise their activities. Read the rest
