Give us this day our daily bread Ⓐnd forgive us our trespasses
Pancho was arrested while meditating at Occupy Oakland and nearly deported. As far as I know after his release he has not been deported to date. See also his interview on Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/18/occupy_oakland_protester_pancho_ramos_stierle)
Thank you, NLG!
Some photos and a first-hand account of being arrested at the 888 Turk squat in San Francisco yesterday.
This is disturbing. Some in the OWS movement think the focus should be on corporate influence over politics (instead of police misconduct). But here Graeber reports the NYPD being violent, targeting women, and doing it for the sake of the banks. They’re not separate issues.
This is a protest I went to back in November. State troopers under Governor Hickenlooper and Denver police under Mayor Hancock had just arrested dozens of people at the Occupy Denver camps and confiscated food and supplies from the kitchen, and then they were made the “guests of honor” at a Denver homeless shelter’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was pathetic.
I’m the thumbnail image for this article!
A photo, quote, and brief bio of 20 people arrested at OWS. My favorite quote: “I think that everyone should be arrested at least once.”
Cops really hate tents; but they also don’t care much for books.
I responded to a questionnaire from the citizen journalist who wrote this article, and am quoted in it along with two other activists who were arrested at Occupy-related events (one from the West Coast and one from Australia). I think I came off sounding like I was trying to be insightful without actually being very insightful (someone remind me never to talk to a reporter in real life!), but at least she used my ‘cops hate tents’ quote to close the article. (I don’t know what the ‘police brutality’ bit in the title has to do with anything; I don’t think any of us were brutalized or witnessed brutality.)
I disagree with her: protest chants almost never feel meaningful.
On Karl Hess’s move to the Left.
If nothing else, the Occupy protests have helped bring attention to laws aimed at criminalizing homelessness and the authoritarian restriction of public spaces.
The DA recently added a charge of trespassing and one of interfering with a law officer to my case (and offered me a deferred judgment, which I refused).
Don Mitchell coined the phrase ‘annihilation of property by law’ to describe the legal exclusion of the public (including the homeless) from ‘public’ spaces. Last year’s Occupy evictions show the violence cities are willing to inflict to so annihilate their public spaces.
This is the issue by which I became associated with Occupy Denver in the first place.
Once again, good on the NLG. Note the protesters in San Diego charged with felony conspiracy for interrupting a political speech.