Thursday, September 29, 2011

“Occupy Wall Street” Spreads to San Diego: Set to begin October 7th in Gaslamp District


a pic of a former protest in S.D.


Editor of the OB Rag says: We received the following from “Occupy San Diego”, which is planning on holding a solidarity action in support of the current “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations that have been occurring daily since September 17th in and around Wall Street in New York City.  Who knows what state the Manhattan actions will be in by time the San Diego protest rolls around, but the San Diego organizers are planning daily meetings.
 SAN DIEGO-Occupy San Diego is standing in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street in NYC, and will begin a peaceful civil disobedience protest of the global financial corruption currently invading politics, media and corporations, by occupying an open space in the Gaslamp District indefinitely starting on October 7, 2011 at 4:30 pm.
 We will peacefully and permanently occupy a space until a list of our demands, that will be in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street in NYC, are met by the City and County of San Diego, and by the Federal Government.
 The long term and overnight occupation will include marching, teach-ins, sit-ins, break out groups and vigils for Troy Davis, a young, black man on death row, recently put to death by the state of Georgia.
 We will also be reaching out to existing political activist groups and labor unions in the San Diego community to stand in solidarity with us.
 Since San Diego is one of many hubs of military activity in our country, we will stand in solidarity with the American troops, who are pawns of the system, and a part of the 99% of the American people, manipulated by Wall Street and the 1%. A very large number of veterans in San Diego, and around the country, remain unemployed after returning from service in current wars, and they are encouraged to join our occupation demonstration.
 Occupy San Diego will begin holding General Assembly meetings in preparation for this demonstration beginning September 27 at 6pm at the Martin Luther King Promenade Park across from the Convention Center Trolley Station, located at 5th Ave. at N Harbor Drive in downtown San Diego. Meetings will commence here daily until the permanent occupation on October 7.
 About Occupy San Diego:
Only 1% of people in this country own and control a majority of the wealth, and this power has invaded into all aspects of our life – politics, media and corporations. We are the 99% and we will be quiet about this inequality no longer. We will take back for the people, what already belongs to the people – our country. For more information about Occupy San Diego visit http://occupytogether.org/events/west/occupy-san-diego/. and for more information about Occupy Wall Street please visit www.occupywallst.org
email: info at occupytogether dot org


It seems that "Occupy Wall St." is spreading like wildfire all across the country! Protests are popping up all through California. San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and of course all across the states. GET WITH THE PROGRAM AND RECOGNIZE AN OPPORTUNITY! THIS MESSAGE IS FOR ALL WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION!!!! 

6,000 California Inmates in Round 2 of Prison Hunger Strike


by prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity / September 29, 2011

As released yesterday, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity has confirmed that at least 6,000 California prisoners in jails, General Population, Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg/ASU) and Security Housing Units (SHUs) are hunger striking for the human rights of California’s SHU-status prisoners. We have confirmed prisoners are striking at Pelican Bay, Calipatria, CCI Tehachapi, Centinela, Corcoran, Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, and West Valley Detention Center.
The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) has not released the total number of prisons, or which prisons prisoners are striking at. The CDCR withheld accurate numbers for several days after the first round of the strike in July until we pressured reporters to investigate and force the CDCR to release information. We know the CDCR is not releasing accurate numbers, and that many more prisoners are participating and supporting the strike in various ways.
The CDCR has also upped retaliation on the strike by deeming the entire strike a prison “disturbance” under Title 15. The CDCR has delivered memos to prisoners at each state prison threatening that any participation or support for the hunger strike will result in disciplinary actions, such as placement in Ad-Seg/ASU or SHUs (for prisoners currently in General Population), increased destructive cell searches, removal of canteen items, and worse. We know that a number of prisoners lost their jobs as added punishment for supporting the strike in July.
The spreading strike and overwhelming international support for it demonstrate the seriousness of torture throughout the prison industrial complex. It is no coincidence that the first round of the hunger strike followed the US Supreme Court’s finding that CA’s prison system is in violation of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Not surprisingly, the CDCR is criminalizing the strike and insisting that the hunger strikers are violent gang members that deserve to be tortured. Meanwhile, we face similar struggles against criminalization outside prison, as cities across CA are stepping up suppression policing tactics, such as gang injunctions, youth curfews and loitering ordinances, inevitably sweeping more people from working class communities of color into prison.
On top of all of that, the state’s realignment plan gives us a huge opportunity to get people out of prison but also adds the threat of unprecedented jail construction to this landscape.
Given this “perfect storm,” we can and must connect our struggles and continue to vigorously defend our communities and unleash our will to resist and organize.

San Diego, Califas ~ Support the Chicano Park Steering Committee in asserting respect for community authority!



The CPSC needs your support. Without following due process, misrepresenting information, and ignoring the authority of the CPSC, the VFW will petition City Hall to approve a Veterans memorial that does not follow through with the overall design elements of Chicano Park. Please come out to speak in support.

Thursday, September 15th, 2:00 pm at the Parks & Rec Board meeting.  City Administration Building, 202 C Street, 12th Floor Closed Session Committee Room.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Occupy Wall Street spreads to San Francisco



As the Occupy Wall Streetdemonstration enters its 12thday in New York City – and as progressive activists protest in cities across the country – Bay Area residents are preparing for a mass mobilization on the streets of San Francisco tomorrow afternoon (Thurs/29), targeting financial institutions and other entities that they blame for the economic plight of the average American.
While the mainstream mediahas alternatively tried to ignorethe uprising or scoffed at its wide range of complaints, the activists involved say it boils down to the powerful doing well at the expense of the powerless, and actively widening that divide. And the manifestations are many: layoffs and employee benefit cuts by profitable corporations, a worsening foreclosure crisis and lack of affordable housing, small businesses that can't get access to capital, political corruption that scuttled real fiscal reforms, deep cuts to government services made worse by the right-wing's refusal to tax rich corporations and individuals, shady corporate tax avoidance schemes, an education system under assault, refusal to seriously address global warming and economic injustice, and a litany of problems created by the same small group of power brokers.
“It's along the lines of saying: Look, these people are screwing us in every way they can,” Alysabeth Alexander, the political director of Servie Employees International Union Local 1021, told us.
That union and many others are part of the broad coalition – a group that includes university students, social service providers, religious leaders, economic justice advocates, the online collective Anonymous, and others – that is organizing tomorrow's protests in San Francisco, which will peak between 3-6 pm at selected targets around the Financial District, such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and Goldman Sachs.
"Big banks crashed our economy and destroyed our communities. Budget cuts threaten our schools, libraries, and social services. We bailed out the banks. Now they need to pay,” organizers wrote in an event invite on Facebook.
One of those organizers is Sarah Page, who has been helping coordinate various Occupy San Francisco events, which begin tomorrow with a 7:30 am “wake-up call” at the “night camp” at Steuart Street near Embarcadero and continue through a 4 pm demonstration outside the Federal Reserve Building and into the evening.
Her group's week of protest began last Saturday with a General Assembly in Union Square and will end with another one there this Saturday at noon. "There's more people camping and they've gotten very organized. Every day it seems like there's more people showing up,” she told us. “There aren't really leaders, the people at the camp are really organizing themselves."
The week of protests, dubbed the Refund California Week of Action, has also been organized and chronicled by the website Make Banks Pay California, which says that this week's protests throughout the Bay Area will be followed up next week by protests in Los Angeles.
Will the protests that began on Wall Street and trickled into cities around the country catch fire in the same way those in the Arab Spring have? I suppose that depends on who shows up and what happens tomorrow. But we at the Guardian will be out on the streets, chronicling the action with words and images here and tweets here or here, so follow along or join the moment.
Yael Chanoff contributed to this report.

Migra PIGS arrest 2,900 undocumented Migrants during a 7-day Nationwide Sweep

Federal PIGS arrested 2,900 undocumented migrants with criminal records during a seven-day nationwide sweep, the biggest of its kind, immigration PIGS said Wednesday.
The arrests include 60 people in West Texas and New Mexico, said officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in El Paso.

ICE officials said the operation, which it dubbed "Cross Check," "led to the arrest of more than 2,900 convicted criminal aliens."
The operation was carried out over a one-week period in all 50 US states and overseas territories, as part of the US administration's strategy to focus on people with criminal records who are in the country illegally.
"The results of this targeted enforcement operation underscore ICE's ongoing commitment and focus on the arrest and removal of convicted criminal aliens and those who game our nation's immigration system," ICE director John Morton said.

It said 681 of those detained had been expelled from the United States after being convicted of crimes but returned to the country illegally, it said.

The agency has carried out operations like "Cross 
Check" before, but this was the first time it has done so simultaneously throughout the country. About 1,900 agents took part in the sweep, it said.

It's ridiculous that Mexicanos are being deported and arrested on our own land under the accusation of being criminally here. WE BUILT THIS SO CALLED "Land of the Free". 
Yet we get no credit for our hard work. Constantly being exploited and undermined on our own tierra. It's time we say "no more!" and Fight Back! All of us. Organize! Mobilize! Strengthen your body, mind, and spirit.

LAPD Internet Unit tracks 'flash mob' activity ~ Via L.A News


The "flash mob" phenomenon seems to keep growing: Mass gatherings of people, brought together by social media. Most gatherings are harmless, but some can lead to trouble. That's why the LAPD has begun tracking flash mobs before they happen.

Traffic came to a complete standstill as hundreds of people spilled onto Hollywood Boulevard on July 28. They were there to see DJ Kaskade, who promoted his impromptu performance on Twitter. But the so-called "flash mob" got too big, and police had to be called in.
"It's challenging, to say the least. We are trying to make a dent," said LAPD Officer Lyle Knight.
Knight works with the LAPD's Internet Unit, which is designed to intercept events like the one in Hollywood before they happen.
"We try to get some feelers. We don't want to be blindsided," said Knight. "We're trying to make sure we have enough personnel deployed."
Most flash mobs are innocent gatherings. But when hundreds of people gather spontaneously in one location, things can go wrong. And that's when the LAPD's Internet Unit comes into play.
The definition of a flash mob? For example, if someone sends out a tweet on Twitter to 500 of their closest friends to join them at a public square for a dance party. If all they're doing is dancing, the LAPD doesn't care. But if the group becomes disruptive or starts engaging in criminal behavior, that's when the police get involved.
"We're looking for criminal behavior. We're looking for public-safety problems. We're certainly not looking for anybody doing anything artistic," said LAPD Commander Andrew Smith.



The officers in the Internet Unit who scour Facebook or Twitter are looking for any signs of a flash mob that might be planning on something illegal.
"Most of the people who participate in them aren't really trying to do anything bad anyway," said L.A. resident Jamiel Grey.
The LAPD says it's not trying to clamp down on fun. It wants to prevent problems, like when the Internet Unit found out that some people were trying to form a flash mob on the Mullholland Bridge during its partial demolition in July.
"We were able to put extra officers on both sides of the bridge, and when people came to scout it out, they realized, 'Hey, there's too many police out here, we're not going to be able to do our little skit on the bridge this time,'" said Smith.

(Copyright ©2011 KABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Modesto Solidarity ~ This Thursday: Demand Delivery for Julie!



Last week Julie was evicted without notice from her home in Denair, and has been locked out since. Both her security deposit and a separate pet deposit are being withheld. In addition, Julie has been presented with an egregiously exorbitant repair and cleaning bill. We are demanding her landlords return her deposits, pro-rate her rent for the month of September, and that the bogus repair bill be dropped. We will be meeting in Modesto at 6:30 pm, at the Turlock DMV at E. Monte Vista and N. Olive at 7:00, and moving on to our delivery location in Turlock. Please come out and support! The more people present the more powerful we are as a group.

For more info on Modesto Solidarity and what Modesto Solidarity does go to:  http://modestosolidarity.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-thursday-demand-delivery-for-julie.html

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Occupy L.A Set to Begin October 1st, 2011


More Info
At Occupy LA's General Assembly meeting on 9/25, we have voted and decided on the official occupation date and location!!!


********CITY HALL ON OCTOBER 1ST!***********


Bring your sleeping bags, tents, food, hygiene products, flashlights, anything else you can think of to sustain occupying overnights, and most importantly, BRING YOUR SIGNS!

"We are the 99%"
"Occupy LA"
Whatever signs you'd like, get creative!

SEE YOU THERE, "WHOSE STREET, OUR STREET!"

~Occupy LA

-----
About Occupy LA:
We are in solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet and the other occupations and actions happening across the nation and the world. We are the 99% that demand a world that works through democracy, not corporatocracy. We will not be silent. Join us. #OccupyLA

Saturday, September 24, 2011

22 Arrested in Los Angeles gang sweep


Friday, Sep. 23, 2011
LOS ANGELES -- Twenty-two people are in jail after a Southern California law enforcement sweep targeting rival Compton gang members.
More than 300 Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and officers from the South Gate, Inglewood, Gardena, Whittier and Anaheim police departments carried out Thursday morning raids at 32 locations.
Sheriff's Lt. Richard Westin tells City News Service that the search and arrest warrants stem from a bitter feud between rival gangs and involve murders, shootings and assaults.
Seventeen men, three women and two juveniles are in jail.
Child welfare officials took custody of three children at locations targeted in the raids.
~ Associated Press


Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/09/23/2550019/22-arrests-in-socal-gang-sweep.html#storylink=mirelated#ixzz1Yuje3qKL

Fresno Pigs Investigate Blog for praising bombing of Sub station


Fresno police are investigating whether there is a connection between a firebombing at a southwest Fresno police substation and a blog on a website where the action was praised a short time later.
"The individual who left this blog either knows [the arsonist] or was involved," Police Chief Jerry Dyer said.
Dyer said the firebombing happened about 11:30 p.m. Aug. 17 at the substation near Tuolumne and C streets. Firefighters went to a fire in the station's parking lot and found that it started on a police pickup and damaged the personal cars of two officers next to the truck.
The cause was arson and investigators from the Fresno Fire Department, the Police Department's bomb unit and an independent investigator are working on the case.
Slightly more than an hour after the arson, at 12:38 a.m. Aug. 18, Dyer said someone published a blog on the website Indybay.org making reference to it. Indybay strongly opposes Bay Area Rapid Transit police after the fatal shooting of passenger Charles Hill in July.
The blog also condemned the Fresno Police Department and its role in the shooting of Carl Maggiorini, 39, who was killed Aug. 3.
The shooting happened after police say Maggiorini charged an officer while wielding a large knife.
The Fresno County Coroner's Office said Maggiorini had "extraordinarily high" levels of methamphetamine in his body at the time of the shooting.
On the website, someone blogging as "Charles Hill" wrote: "In solidarity with everyone fighting against police brutality and the police state, Molotovs were thrown into the parking lot of the Fresno SW substation where police cars and pigs' personal vehicles are parked. At least two cars burned ... All police are murderers. FPD recently executed Carl Maggiorini and have a strong reputation for executing people of color whether armed or not. The time to fight back is now!"
Said Dyer: "These types of people are cowards."
He added that he had "significant concerns that a least one individual is trying to engage officers in actions against police."
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also is aware of the case, Dyer said.
Efforts to reach Indybay for comment were unsuccessful.
~ Jim Guy, Fresno Bee

THE REPORTER MAY BE REACHED AT JGUY@FRESNOBEE.COM OR (559) 441-6339.


Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/08/24/2510818/fresno-police-investigate-blog.html#storylink=mirelated#ixzz1Yuhhx4Dl

Border Patrol Agents Continue to Commit Crimes Against Mexicans


U.S. Border Patrol Agents Charged with Rape, Assault, and Torture by CARA on SEPTEMBER 13, 2010 in BIGOTRY, HUMAN RIGHTS, IMMIGRATION, MISOGYNY, PATRIARCHY, RACE AND RACISM, RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS



Trigger Warning for discussions/descriptions of border violence, sexual violence, and state violence, specifically with relation to U.S. immigration enforcement.

Last week, the LA Times reported on a case of alleged assault and torture by a U.S. Border Patrol official against a drug suspect, tying it to other alleged and successfully prosecuted instances of violence, including sexual violence, by Border Patrol officials in the past 18 months. Suzy Khimm followed up with a blog post over at Mother Jones (h/t radically hott off).
In the last 18 months, five Border Patrol agents have been accused or convicted of sex crimes, including one agent who pleaded guilty in January to raping a woman while off duty, and another who is accused of sexually assaulting a migrant while her young children were nearby in a car.
Another agent, Gamalier Reyes Rivera, is jailed in San Diego on $10-million bail, awaiting trial on attempted murder charges in a hatchet attack that paralyzed a man.
In June, Agent Eduardo Moreno pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge for assaulting a migrant in 2006 at a processing center in Nogales, Ariz.
That same month, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed an unarmed 15-year-old Mexican in El Paso after a group of young men threw rocks at the agent, authorities said. A poor-quality cellphone video of the incident shows that the teen was a considerable distance away, on the Mexican side of the border, when he was shot.
There are more details about additional assaults at the link, if you're not familiar with them. To its credit, the LA Times is careful to not only report on them collectively as a connected problem, but to also explicitly point out that they are a part of a pattern:
The Border Patrol treats detainees "very, very poorly," said Tony Payan, a political scientist who studies the agency at the University of Texas at El Paso. "They see themselves as a quasi-military body defending the country. Add to that the fact that they are expanding rapidly, and you have thousands of rookies who have very little experience."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, the Border Patrol's parent agency, said in a statement that "the overwhelming majority of CBP agents and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction.... We do not tolerate corruption or abuse within our ranks, and we fully cooperate with any criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel, on or off duty."
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, CBP is missing the point in the interest of self-preservation. I'd argue that the LA Times article ultimately misses the point, as well. The thing is that we can talk about accountability and how there is or is not enough of it until we're blue in the face. But it's really difficult to have accountability for violence inside a system that is predicated on violence itself.
The U.S.'s current model of border enforcement is built on violence and upheld through violence. Some activists make the compelling argument thatborder enforcement as a concept, through its dependence on colonization and restriction of free bodily movement, particularly of indigenous people, is inherently racist, violating, and violent. But even placing those important questions aside, there is no reasonable case that the U.S. immigration enforcement system, as is, is not a violent one. Anyone who has ever dealt with Border Patrol or ICE, been placed in detention, had their family torn apart, been robbed of the ability to work and feed themselves, or lived under the weight of being dubbed an "illegal" can tell you as much. Violence is the method. Violence is the "deterrent." Violence is the point.
So what we're really talking about here, when we look at outrage to these particular, individual acts of violence by Border Patrol, are the differences between acceptable and unacceptable forms of violence. It is currently acceptable for us to build fences along the border everywhere but the deserts where it is most dangerous for migrants to cross, and where they frequently die from dehydration; for us to detain children, including indefinitely; for us to leave detainees without water or timely medical care; for us to promote a culture where safely crossing the border is not an option, and abuse is seen as an inherent condition of passage. But rape and beatings, on the other hand -- at least, when committed by border officials -- these are forms of violence that apparently cross the line, that deserve newspaper articles and mainstream public protest and prosecution.
I suppose we could be glad that finally we are at a point where even undocumented immigrants, so frequently dehumanized and stripped of all dignity by the "legal" public, aren't generally seen as deserving of rape and outright violent assault -- though even then, I'm sure, there are exceptions, those willing to say that immigrants would not be raped or beaten if only they'd stayed where they belonged. But don't be surprised if I can't get too excited when the United States currently contains countless residents so instilled with fear that they will not seek out their right to medical care, even when it is necessary or even life-saving, and this form of bodily violence is still seen as somehow rightly deserved. Where violence involving fists and weapons may be seen as wrong, but violence relying on state power and implicit and explicit threats is seen as not only right but necessary.
This is what is so frustrating and terrifying but important to understand about the interconnectedness of different forms of oppression and violence. We can try to stop Border Patrol agents from raping or beating people, but that doesn't stop the violence, or address the bigger or deeper issues at play. And drawing an imaginary line where some forms of violence and violations of autonomy are acceptable and others are not is not only just largely serving to make ourselves feel better, it's also just plain unrealistic. How can we expect Border Patrol agents to reasonably respect the human rights of undocumented (or even suspected undocumented) immigrants when the denial of their humanity is the name of the game?
http://thecurvature.com

Women testify in police officer sex case hearing (San Diego, Califaztlan)


 — A woman testified Monday that a police officer made inappropriate comments to her and put his hand down her pants in October when he stopped her in the Gaslamp Quarter purportedly on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.
The woman, who was 30 at the time, said she had just pulled her car out of a parking spot on Fourth Avenue near Island Avenue and began to drive, when a man she came to know as Officer Anthony Arevalos contacted her.
“He thought I was sitting at the stop sign too long,” the woman testified in San Diego Superior Court.
What followed was a nearly two-hour encounter during which the officer repeatedly asked the woman to get out of the car and to agree to take a breath-test to measure the alcohol in her system. She said she declined to do either.
The woman said the officer then asked whether her breasts were real and if she had modeled or participated in any wet T-shirt contests. At some point during the conversation, he said he would let the woman go if she showed him her breasts.
She said she eventually lifted her top and “flashed” the officer.
The woman was the first to testify Monday at a preliminary hearing for Arevalos, 40, an 18-year veteran who was fired from the San Diego Police Department in April after he was accused of stopping several women for traffic violations, then promising to let them go in exchange for sexual favors.
In some incidents, he is accused of touching or groping the women.
Arevalos was charged in March with 18 felony counts, including sexual battery, assault and battery by an officer, asking for a bribe and false imprisonment. The charges involved five alleged victims.
On Monday, Deputy District Attorney Sherry Thompson filed four more charges for similar conduct involving three additional women.
The alleged offenses date back to August 2008, according to the criminal complaint.
At the end of the hearing, which is expected to last at least two days, Judge John Einhorn will decide whether enough evidence exists for the case to proceed to trial.
Arevalos, who is free on bail, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could face a prison term of more than 20 years, the prosecutor said.
Four women testified Monday that they had run-ins with Arevalos, who stopped them for various reasons, such as suspicion of DUI or for invalid vehicle registration. The San Diego Union-Tribune is not identifying the women because they are named as victims in a sex-crime case.
Defense lawyers Jan Ronis and Gretchen von Helms questioned each of them about whether they had been drinking before the officer stopped them. Some said they had.
One woman, a nursing student, admitted to offering Arevalos money in January 2010 if he agreed to let her go. He declined the money, she said, but asked what else she could offer that was “out of the books.”
The first witness testified that she felt "upset" when Arevalos stood in the open doorway of her Honda Civic during the Oct. 22 incident and asked her questions about her body. She said he brushed his hand against one of her breasts as he held the breath machine close to her body.
“He said, “Can you feel that? Does it feel good?’” she testified. She said she responded, “Actually, no. It kind of hurts,” and the officer backed off.
Moments later, he stuck his hand into her low-rise jeans, making contact with her bare skin. She said she told the officer she would leave her car and take a taxi home if he would let her go.
Eventually, the officer flagged a cab, she said.   ~ Signonsandiego.com

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Brown Berets de Aztlan NOW RECRUITING!!



We are the oldest Brown Beret Organization. We stand up and fight for the rights of our people through Revolutionary Action. We aren't your typical "all talk" organization, we are here to get the job done through our actions and not just through propaganda. If this sounds like something you would like to be involved in and you have a passion for the RAZA then contact us for more info.

Just because you contact us it does not mean you will automatically qualify for membership, there is a protocol you must follow to be a real Brown Beret. We are not an internet based group.