Don’t Suppress OWS Rally and March on February 28

Yesterday, February 28th, people gathered at Union Square in New York to protest the brutal suppression of the Occupy Wall Street movement which spread all over the country.  Nationally coordinated police raids were carried out in the dark of night, injuring peaceful protestors and destroying their personal property, as well as the People’s Library at the New York occupation.  The only violence done was by the police.

A group of people in New York, both within the Occupy movement and from those like me in the community who have been inspired by it and supported it, formed an Ad Hoc Committee Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement and planned the rally and march.

Unless otherwise noted, all the photographs below were made by Scoboco.

One of the people at Union Square for the rally expressing the view of many present

People listening intently to those on stage

At this event, a little different from many, there were in Acts 1 and 2 of this rally drama, occupiers on ladders in the crowd showing in words what it was like to experience the eviction  and something of the nature of what the occupation movement actually did.

Occupier Desiree above the heads of the crowd on a ladder telling her story about the eviction

Attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler, who has been arrested for doing so, spoke about taking the movement to Black and Latino neighborhoods.  Signs from the stage said things like “They stole our shit!” and “They were violent, but we got arrested!”

In Act 3, about the effects of the Suppession of OWS, attorney Norman Siegel, who is bringing a lawsuit against the city for the destruction of the People’s Library in the eviction, was one of the  speakers. Professor Andrew Ross from NYU, part of Occupy Student Debt, addressed that issue, which affects many of our young people

Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary with his daughter Bethany sang a special version of The Great Mandala at the end of Act 3.  He had also performed  a set of songs including Have You Been to Jail for Justice as people gathered on the Square beginning at 4pm

Act 4 was where Voices of Conscience, several prominent people from different arenas, spoke about why Occupy is important and called us to act to resist the suppression of it.  Susan Sarandon, who has been arrested with the occupiers, was one who has herself acted courageously. Andy Zee spokesperson for Revolution Books also spoke in this section.

Noam Chomsky could not be present, but sent a video that was screened in Act 4, photograph unattributed

Rev. Steven Phelps, senior minister of the Riverside Church, concluded the spoken part of Act 4. Then, Outernational, the musical group that had also done a set before the rally began, played their rousing Fighting Song.  Part of the lyrics were Go! Go! Go! encouraging us to go on the march.

Outernational (photograph unattributed)

Travis Morales, who was one of the two Narrators  with Alice Woodward, then called us to march to Liberty Square behind the huge puppet of Lady Liberty.

 

 Lady Liberty

NYPD out in force.

What are the corporate masters afraid of from a group of peaceful, if noisy, protestors?  Why did the NYPD don riot gear and evict them from Liberty Plaza last year in a raid coordinated with similar ones across the country?  Why were they present in the hundreds  at this rally and march of completely peaceful people?  The only answer is that the ruling corporate elites of this country do not want change, do not care about the inequality, and are willing to pay for violent suppression of it.

Fortunately, persons like Peter Yarrow on stage and at the head of the march may have helped temper the response to this protest event.  We all arrived at Liberty Square, where we chanted “Whose park? Our park?”  We have made a beginning of a response to the suppression of OWS.  We need to keep moving forward to support this movement.

Averting your eyes?

“Then force entered in; might making right; power and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye.”*

There is so much injustice in US society that to catalogue it all would take pages. Yesterday’s Don’t Suppress OWS event focused on that directed toward the peaceful protestors of the Occupy Movement, who had brought to national attention the staggering economic equality that exists in this country.

All the injustices are connected. The police state at home, the wars and brutality here and abroad, the devastation of the planet, the abrogation of rights, and on and on.

Are you averting your eyes? I know that some people are not. They act in some way to stop the madness that reigns in this society. Some give money to support things like yesterday’s action. If you didn’t, you still can here or go to the event website where on the right hand side there is an address where you can send a check . If you prefer other organizations or issues, there are lots of places to make a difference with your contribution. Find one and give what you can. Then you will know you are not averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

Some people go to the streets. If you haven’t ever done that, you are missing an experience not like any other. Do it now. Then you and others will know you are not averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

Some people organize protest at all levels. There is so much work to be done at computer terminals, in meetings, in courtrooms, on the streets. Find an organization and do something to help it. Then you will know that you are not averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

Failure to do something, to act, is averting your eyes and allying yourself with violence.

I am profoundly grateful for all the people on this planet who are working wherever they are to stop violence and injustice. I know that we are all connected in a vast web. I call on everyone who has not yet taken action to join us. We have right on our side. We will be able to answer our own consciences when we are asked how we could have lived in this time and allowed these horrors to happen with the true reply that we worked to stop them.

*From Ursula Le Quin’s The Dispossessed, Harper Voyager 2011,p.256 p.

No Tear Gas, No Rubber Bullets…

Women Maced in NYC

Peaceful activists in New York and across the country have been viciously and brutally attacked for assembling and  speaking out about the massive inequality in this country.  They have also been arrested and held on trumped up charges, as though they were at fault when they are only exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The night before and into the morning after the first threatened eviction of OWS from Liberty Square in October,  I remember remarking vividly that the only people I saw with guns (and also clubs and night sticks) were the police.  The occupiers were completely unarmed.  They had only their moral courage to defend themselves.

George Packard, a retired Episcopal bishop who was detained by the NYPD while bringing water to the occupiers at Liberty Square, and later arrested in an Occupy Wall Street action, said the action February 28 “is the absolute preface to any other actions. It’s a question of process even before we take to the streets–how is it that there is this coordinated effort to stifle our free speech?! Mayors on conference calls simultaneously rousting encampments? Renegade cops taking aggressive initiatives because it makes superiors smile? Tear gas and rubber bullets fired into the ranks of Occupy Oakland? Enough!”

With Bishop George Packard, I say Enough!.  I will join the Bishop and thousands of others to make it clear that this suppression of OWS and the Occupy Movement is an assault on the the rights of the people of this country and is not to be accepted.  Click here to join Bishop Packard, 700 others,  and me in signing the Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement.  Then join us in the streets on February 28th.

In NYC:

Tues Feb 28 Union Square
No Rubber Bullets – No Beatings  
No Tear Gas – No Mass Arrests
Drop All the Charges Against Occupiers  
Don’t Suppress OWS!  Stand with Occupy!
4:00 pm Gather 5:00 pm Rally 6:00 pm March

 Contribute to the expenses of the rally

Join the Mass Action on February 28

The Occupy Movement is exposing the inequality that exists in the US.  The power elites are not answering that exposure with rational discourse.  There is no acceptable reason for such a system.  They respond through their paid officials and police with brute force.  It is so telling.

Scott Olsen, injured with police projectile at Occupy Oakland.  Scott is one of the signers of the Call for Mass Action against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement.  See other signers and sign here.

As a member of the ad hoc committee planning a mass action to resist the violent suppress of the peaceful Occupy protests, I encourage everyone to join in the mass action wherever you are.

Bishop George Packard, first over the fence.  He is also a member of the ad hoc committee and a signer of the call

For those

In NYC:

Tues Feb 28 Union Square
No Rubber Bullets – No Beatings  
No Tear Gas – No Mass Arrests
Drop All the Charges Against Occupiers  
Don’t Suppress OWS!  Stand with Occupy!
4:00 pm Gather 5:00 pm Rally 6:00 pm March

Contribute to the expenses of the New York rally

For people in other places, organize something and let us all know about it.

We Must Close Guantanamo and Stop Torture

We have always known at some level of consciousness from the opening of the prison at Guantanamo, but since the release of some of the prisoners we know for sure that the US tortures them.  Below are damning sections of a report by Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National Lawyers Guild and fierce advocate for human rights:

“Although the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the United States has ratified, forbids the use of coercion under any circumstances to obtain information, prisoners released from Guantánamo have detailed assaults, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, sexual abuse, and threats with dogs.  Mustafa Ait Idr, an Algerian citizen who was living in Bosnia when he was sent to Guantánamo, charged that U.S. military guards jumped on his head, resulting in a stroke that paralyzed his face. They also broke several of his fingers and nearly drowned him in a toilet. Mohammed Sagheer, a Pakistani cleric, claimed the wardens at Guantánamo used drugs “that made us senseless.” French citizen Mourad Benchellali, released from Guantánamo in July 2004, said, “I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the worst aspect of being at the camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you say, it will never make a difference.”  Benchellali added, “There is unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable to punish the guilty.”

Prisoners kneeling in the sun

“Australian lawyer Richard Bourke, who has represented many of the men incarcerated at Guantánamo, charged that prisoners have been subjected to “good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.” According to Bourke, “One of the detainees had described being taken out and tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed.” Abdul Rahim Muslimdost, an Afghan who was released from Guantánamo in April 2005, said he suffered “indescribable torture” there.

“U.S. and international bodies have verified reports of torture and abuse.  Physicians for Human Rights found that “the United States has been engaged in systematic psychological torture of Guantánamo detainees” at least since 2002. FBI agents saw female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners’ genitals and witnessed detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours. In February 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the U.S. military at Guantánamo amounts to torture.”

Read the entire article here.

Will you turn away from these horrors or take responsibility and work to stop them?  I hold citizenship in a country that tortures people.  I cannot act as though this does not concern me. I join with others to protest and demand the end to torture by the US.

Lena spoke with old friends in France recently when she was there.  She said that they had seen news reports on that country’s media about the protest in Washington, DC on the anniversary of the opening of the torture camp at Guantanamo in January.  The US media, handmaidens of the ruling elite here, did not cover that event.  It is up to us to make these crimes against humanity by the US known and to resist them.

Responding in NYC to Oakland Police Brutality Against Occupy Oakland

Before I even arrived at 6:30pm at the arch on Washington Square Park, I could hear the drum circle in action, but the next thing I noticed was a huge NYPD presence. In response to the violent suppression of peaceful occupiers in Oakland yesterday, the OWS and others called for a march starting at Washington Square Park this evening, Sunday, Jan 29th, at 7pm. Once again, the inordinate police presence reminded me that I must join with others to resist the repression of dissent and the specific suppression of the Occupy movement, the most eloquent expression of dissent in recent memory.

I distributed copies of the Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement with the names of some of those who have signed it and are organizing the event on February 25th until the mic check preceded the announcement that the march would being in a few minutes.

With the drums mostly in the lead (though a few straggled out along the long line to support the whole group), we headed north under the arch and up Fifth Avenue.

“From Oakland to NYC, Stop police brutality,” was our cry

I did not have a camera, so I don’t have photographs of us–young and old, a wide cross section of people in this city. Below are images of the suppression on Saturday of  Occupy Oakland from Huffington Post:

Occupiers, numerous and probably noisy, but clearly unarmed and peaceful

Police in riot gun firing “less lethal” weapons

Am I the only person who finds this a totally inappropriate response, indeed an illegal and illegitimate one? These police appear to be facing an armed invasion, not a march to a vacant building by peaceful protesters.

The brutal response of the police of Oakland again and by other forces throughout the country, aided by US government officials in an unconstitutional use of federal forces in state and local policing, is more easily explained by a statement quoted by Chris Hedges today:

“‘I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,’ Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence.

“’My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a “brainwasher” and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,’ she went on. ‘During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.'” [Emphasis mine.]

The Occupy movement is a very great threat because it not only says another world is possible, it is modeling that possibility right now.  Note Henderson’s list of 1) independent media, which the Occupy movement has as well, that allow them to disseminate information outside the corporate propaganda organs, 2)the medics which work outside heavily tax subsidized corporate medicine in the US, and 3)the legal observers who call the government’s illegal actions out are mentioned–areas where the Occupy movement also is already working outside the corporate controlled realm.  This is indeed frightening to the corporatocracy and its minions in government, not only in the US but in Canada and around the world.  A New World Is Possible, and it is taking shape right in front  of their eyes, openly, in public spaces.  They cannot let that happen, so they send in the army, let us call it by its right name.

I must resist this.  I showed up for the protest on Sunday and work for the event on Feb 25th.

I had spoken before we left Washington Square with a teachers’ union organizer who remarked on the need to let people know in the face of media misinformation that there is broad support for the occupy movement, and that in fact all but a tiny few people in this country are in the process of losing their future as well as their rights. This is not a movement of some fringe group, but one that represents the vast majority of people in the US and the world.

We continued to hand out leaflets all along the route as we chanted, encouraging others to join us. In spite of the last minute nature of this march, a presentable number of us turned out.

I will not forget a brief encounter with a man to whom I offered a flyer. He asked me if the intent were against OWS. I said that it was not, but in support of it and of the rights of all of us. He replied that he worked for a bank. Clearly, this was a man who works at a bank, not one of the small group who control them. I suggested that his job is not very secure, as he walked off irate. In fact, there is a continuing huge lay off of workers in banks, as the situation those institutions created continues to deteriorate, a fact not widely revealed in US media, but reported in that of the developed countries. I wonder what he will do if he loses his job? Where will he get support? To whom will he turn? If he were ever really to want to know the truth and to work for the good of all, he would be welcomed by the those in OWS.

The financial sector has shed massive number of jobs through early 2011, before the huge losses of the end of the year.  European researchers predict a loss of 10% to 20% of bank employees in the year 2012

Ed Reports on Washington Action

World Can’t Wait Contingent from NYC just off the bus, Ed is on the front row far left, camera in hand, ready to go!

So, I went down to our nation’s capital (second time, since High School field trip in ’84) to cover the 10th Anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and it was a pretty eye-opening experience.  Didn’t know too much about it, as our press doesn’t cover it, for obvious reasons:  There are innocent (our government even admits they’re innocent) people being tortured and detained in GITMO – being held there with no habeas corpus rights, no evidence, no trial – nothing.  And to make matters worse, Obama just signed a law, stating that the Federal Govt. now has the right to do this to American Citizens!  Isn’t this supposed to be a free country?  Why does the press not cover this and why is every single attorney and citizen not up in arms about this?  Gotta wonder.  Well, all walks of American life were out there in the rain letting their voices be heard, and here’s the footage…

Click here for Guantanamo Bay Protest in DC, January 11, 2012

Still from the video of Street Theater Before the Big March

and here for GITMO Spoken Word and Dance Protest

CCR Advocate about to read a poem by one of the Prisoners

and here for Andy Worthington and Other Protesters at Supreme Court

Other film stills showing people of all ages who participated

Ed’s Film of Andy on the Steps of the Supreme Court

Since there is precious little coverage of the protest last Wednesday, the 10th anniversary of the opening of the torture camp at Guantanamo, it is especially important for me to share the film Ed Haas made of the event.  Here is a link to remarks by Andy Worthington foremost authority on the prisoners at Guantanamo, from the steps of the Supreme Court Building.

Andy Worthington

See Andy’s new website here.

Drone on 53rd Street

As I turned the corner from Fifth Avenue, I could see it hovering in the middle of the block, an eyeless drone, blind and lethal.

What I really saw was the replica of a reaper drone created by Nick Mottern, being used in a protest in front of the Museum of Modern Art of these weapons that bring death to thousands of people whom the US targets.  I hurried along, fearing I was late.  It turned out that the installation of this high tech replica required a lot of time.

Drone replica at protest in DC earlier

When he had finished setting up, Nick made it possible for passersby to see themselves on computer monitors in the sights of his model drone, which is equipped with a camera that streamed to the monitors.  This is how the real ones work, but the people it targets are often on the other side of the globe, in Pakistan and Afghanistan for example, from the arm chair pilots in Arizona and Nevada and other sites in the US.

Also, Nick’s drone was not far off the earth, so we could easily recognize ourselves, whereas the images that determine when the pilots launch the drones’ lethal weapons are not so close and people are not distinct.  The result is many deaths by drone of people who are just going about their lives unsuspectingly.

The event I participated in was organized by the World Can’t Wait and the site was chosen to coincide with the exhibit in the museum of artist Harun Farocki’s Images of War (At A Distance).  You can read about it here.

We were on the street handing out flyers about drones and talking with people.  As Nick interviewed people who stopped by, a filmmaker shot footage.  The rest of us also engaged when we could with people who stopped.

It was Friday afternoon when the Museum of Modern Art offers free entry and huge crowds made it hard to step back and get a really good look at the replica drone and hard to connect the scene of the computer monitors with the overhead drone at first.  Even so, we passed out nearly five hundred flyers in the time we were there, and a number of people stopped long enough to get the full picture.

Some of the people I spoke with were, not surprisingly since they had come to the Farocki exhibit, well acquainted with the horrors of drone warfare and the insidious nature of its expansion during the current regime.  Often they thanked us for this action.  A few people who stopped did not know much about drones and were interested in what we had to say.  Some young men had been in military recruiting centers where video war games are offered to the young to entice them to join.  I found their attitudes complex and reflected on the subtleties of US corporate media and entertainment in the ubiquitous US propaganda campaigns of the last few decades. I am saving those reflections for a separate post, but note the issue here.

Nick Mottern, the creator of these replicas, told me that he made the first one after writing an article for TruthOut.org “Calling Them Out: War Profiteer Steven R. Loranger” about the CEO of ITT which manufactures the bomb releases for the drones.  He decided to protest at Loranger’s house in Connecticut and that a model drone would enhance such an action.  One thing led to another, as he conceded to me in talking about the origins of these replicas, and the result is the high tech model that he contributed to our action yesterday.

Nick is a journalist with a great many other skills.  It was especially good to have met him and watched him in action as a journalist making the documentary as well.

In speaking with people, Nick said frequently that he wanted to see these weapons banned internationally.  Me, too.  I also want to see media reporting the truth about them and a more informed public willing to act to stop the wars and crimes and human rights violations of its government.

Torture Still Goes On

Jeffrey Kaye in The Public Record of Dec 8th, 2011 quotes Diane Feinstien:

“As chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, I can say that we are nearing the completion [of] a comprehensive review of the CIA’s former interrogation and detention program, and I can assure the Senate and the Nation that coercive and abusive treatment of detainees in U.S. custody was far more systematic and widespread than we thought.

“Moreover, the abuse stemmed not from the isolated acts of a few bad apples but from fact that the line was blurred between what is permissible and impermissible conduct, putting U.S. personnel in an untenable position with their superiors and the law.”

This testimony by Senator Diane Feinstein concludes with more obfuscating language, but this part is at least clear and direct.   Kaye continues:

“One reason for the lulled non-murmur over torture is the outrageous lie that Obama, after coming into office, ‘ended torture.’  He enshrined the Army Field Manual as the supposedly humane alternative to the Bush torture regime of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ Feinstein, who certainly knows better, is an exemplary model for such myth-making — ‘myth’ because the Army Field Manual actually uses torture of various sorts, and even though about half-a-dozen human rights and legal organizations, and a number of prominent government interrogators have said so in a Nov. 2010 letter signed by 14 well-known interrogators to then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates..” Feinstein clearly knows this and,  as Kaye shows in the rest of the article, but she still claims that the AFM and other guidelines are enough without secret documents.  What she fails to say is that they allow torture openly.

He states that he does not expect Feinstein to respond to questions he has about US torture methods.  He continues:

“Instead I ask readers, what kind of a country is it that has torture written into its public documents, and no one raises a fuss (or practically no one)?

“The failure to take on the AFM [Army Field Manual]and its Appendix M abuses in a serious fashion has led in a straight line to the political pornography of watching torture debated in Congress and among Presidential candidates, as well as a surge of political effort being made in some circles to make sure all such abuse is hidden forever behind a veil of classification. This failure is directly the responsibility of the human rights groups, who have not made it clear to their constituencies and the public at large how serious the problem currently is. While most of them are on the record of opposing the abuses described above, they repeatedly have pulled their punches for political reasons (as during the recent debate on the Ayotte amendment), and as a result, they must take the hard criticism when it comes, until, or unless they turn this around.”

I ask why we as citizens depend on the “human rights groups” who don’t do what they can for “political reasons.”  Such groups are not worth supporting.  What can we do directly as citizens?  Are we among those who have let US torture go unchallenged?  What can we do to resist torture by the US government right now?