Nonviolent Resistance

AN APPEAL TO UNITED STATES AND ISRAELI AIR, MISSILE AND DRONE CREWS TO STAND DOWN FROM ORDERS TO ATTACK IRAN

November 2011 -- Add Your Name!

You meet simply wonderful and incredibly smart people at nonviolent occupations.  At least I do.  I just met someone who knows exactly what they are talking about but does not want to be identified in any way other than by the name "Prof."  Prof has been thinking about how to strengthen the Occupy movement, how to build a structure for it -- or rather how to allow it to build one itself, from the ground up, with ideas moving up levels of representation, not down as we're all so used to, and with people who cannot or will not or anyway do not sleep in public squares able to take part in a lasting and effective way.  I cannot recommend too strongly that every Occupation look into this and click the links, hold trainings, and get this rolling. --David Swanson

Four supporters of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning appeared today before a judge in Manassas, Virginia, to face charges stemming from their arrests in March outside of a Marine military brig in Quantico, Virginia. These supporters were arrested along with many others who are outraged at the abusive confinement conditions to which PFC Manning was subjected during the eight months he was held at the Quantico Pre-Trial Confinement Facility. They were detained after military officials reneged on their offer to allow flowers to be placed at an Iwo Jima Memorial located at the entrance to the base.

Among those arrested attempting to lay flowers were veterans and family members of veterans, including Daniel Ellsberg, the “Pentagon Papers” whistle-blower. Instead of accepting their charges and paying fines, these four supporters pleaded not-guilty and chose to assert their First Amendment rights inside the courtroom.

READ THE REST AT BRADLEY MANNING SUPPORT NETWORK

Activists Badly Treated by Israeli Authorities
By Ann Wright

A press release from Irish Ship to Gaza (www.irishshiptogaza.org) reported that National Coordinator Fintan Lane was able to make a phone call Sunday afternoon, November 6, 2011, from the Israeli prison in which he and 13 other Irish citizens are being held.

Israeli attack on freedom waves ships “violent and dangerous”

Lane told the Irish Ship to Gaza team in Dublin that “the takeover of the MV Saoirse was violent and dangerous. Despite very clear protests from the occupants of the two boats that they did not want to be taken to Israel, they were forcibly removed from the boats in a violent manner. The whole takeover took about three hours.”

By Linn Washington Jr.

London -- For a dozen years they had marched peacefully to the street containing the residence of Britain’s prime minister, asking the current occupant of #10 Downing Street to investigate the scourge ripping at the soul of this nation.

That scourge is the thousands of suspicious deaths occurring while in the custody of British police, in British prisons and in British mental health facilities.

Eight persons died in police custody just during the first nine months of 2011, according to official British government statistics. That’s more than double the custody deaths last year.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement pushes forward, evolving daily in mission and meaning, its cinematic companion has arrived on the scene. Heist: Who Stole The American Dream? is the latest socially and politically relevant documentary executive produced by Earl Katz, President of Public Interest Pictures. Heist will soon premiere as the fundamental primer on the historical and present-day inequities which gave rise to the Occupy Movement. From its 1930s depiction of Depression Era breadlines to Wisconsin Governor Walker's current assault on Collective Bargaining, Heist tells the story of America in decline due to the excessive greed of corporate executives and politicians bent on destroying the middle class.

By Lori Spencer

Washington, DC: OccupyWashingtonDC.org, which is occupying Freedom Plaza, has endorsed the call for a General Strike in Oakland to express opposition to the police violence that sought to undermine the rights of Americans to assemble to redress grievances.  Below is a more detailed description of what is occurring in Oakland.

By Carol Baum

By John Grant

The people, unfortunately, are still very ignorant, and are kept in ignorance by the systematic efforts of all the governments, who consider this ignorance, not without good reason, as one of the essential conditions of their own power.

-Mikhail Bakunin

It was 10:30 pm on Dilworth Plaza, the concrete apron around Philadelphia City Hall that’s home for over 100 tents in the Occupy Philadelphia movement. The air was clear and the temperature was pleasant.

Never More Proud to Be in a Courtroom

by Kathleen Kirwin

October 28, 2011

“AS THE FATHER OF A YOUNG SON, I WENT TO THE WHITE HOUSE ON MARCH 19^TH TO BE A VOICE FOR SHAHIDULLAH.” From the closing argument of Defendant Art Laffin in DC Superior Court.

Official VFP Statement Regarding Police Assaults in Oakland

Veteran For Peace member, Scott Olsen, a Marine Corps veteran twice deployed to Iraq, is in hospital now in stable but serious condition with a fractured skull, struck by a police projectile fired into a crowd in downtown Oakland, California in the early morning hours of today.  Other people were injured in the assault and many were arrested after Oakland police in riot gear were ordered to evict people encamped in the ongoing "Occupy Oakland" movement.  Olsen is also a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

VFP members are involved with dozens of these local "occupy movement" encampments and we support them fully.  In Boston, for example, our members, wearing VFP shirts and carrying VFP flags, stood between a line of police and the encampment, urging police to "join the 99%" and not evict the protesters.  In that case, several of our members were banged and bruised when the police decided instead to carry out their eviction orders.

In Oakland, last night, a similar thing happened, according to VFP Chapter 69 member and Navy veteran, Joshua Sheperd, who said he went to downtown Oakland "to see if, as a VFP member, I could help still the anger...to be between the police and the protesters...it seemed unconscionable to me that the police use the cover of darkness like that to do what they were doing."  Fortunately, he was not injured in the police assault that left Olsen with a fractured skull.

Take Action at RootsAction!

Leah Bolger of Oregon is the Vice President of Veterans for Peace, is occupying Freedom Plaza, and risked jail on Wednesday, with another case pending against her, to speak up in the Super Congress (Deficit Committee) hearing, in which she was arrested.  She has been released.

Bolger comments: "I had to speak up.  The witness, Douglas Elmendorf, was hiding the fact that military spending has increased dramatically in real terms and as a percentage of discretionary spending.  He was focused on percentage of GDP, as if war spending should increase whenever it can, not whenever it has to.  The simple deficit solution of taxing the rich and curtailing the militarism is favored by the majority of the public.  The 99% had no other voice in that room to compete with those of the corporate lobbyists."

Take Action at RootsAction!

Cornel West, Professor, Author, Public Intellectual
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party
Rev. Stephen Phelps, Interim Senior Minister of Riverside Church
Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, Rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
Debra Sweet, Director of World Can’t Wait
Rev. Omar Wilks, Unison Pentecostal Church
Prof. Jim Vrettos, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Elaine Brower, Military Mom and World Can’t Wait

According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, 33 were arrested, including Occupy Wall Street protesters

By John Grant

As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause -- a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator -- and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story.

Patrick Howley

Editorial Assistant, The American Spectator

Here’s a story from the annals of fools posing as journalists.

I've been arrested before and always paid a fine right away, perhaps because I was part of a larger group.  This time they're threatening us with fines and jail, which I certainly did not expect. Watch:

By Charles M. Young

Liberated Autonomous Manhattan -- In a century, community organizers will still be debating what to call Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza/Liberty Square. The surrounding skyscrapers will be covered with luxuriant tomato vines hanging from rooftop organic gardens. Electricity will be generated by solar panels and fermenting compost. Inside, the skyscrapers will be humming with intense conversation at the Occupy Education Graduate School of Revolutionary Studies, open to anyone willing to teach everyone wanting to learn.

Visitors to the park will meander through meticulously maintained sidewalks that wind in fractals through authentic tarps and wet sleeping bags from the early 21st century. Scent generators will alternately waft herbal cigarettes, sandalwood incense and mildew into the breeze.

Let's add this one to the large number of arrests being reported in NY and around the world.

"Tonight, Progressive Caucus Chair Karen Bernal, activist Cindy Sheehan and at least one dozen other peaceful protestors were arrested at Occupy Sacramento.  I counted about 35 police vehicles and dozens of officers in riot gear as the peaceful demonstrators occupied Cesar Chavez Park after a day when hundreds of protestors marched to the CA State Capitol.  I'm sending this from my phone, but will have more details, photos and video in the morning." --Bill Lackemacher

By John Grant

At the end of this chaotic YouTube video, made at the end of a huge victory by the activists occupying Wall Street, and their thousands of supporters, one of many outraged demonstrators is heard hollering: "He ran over his fuckin' leg!"

Well, I've looked at the video three times and that seems a pretty accurate description of what this cop did.

At first, the scooter's front wheel seems to be in front of the young man's leg. The guy, by the way, is a clearly legal observer wearing an official National Lawyers Guild yellow observer hat. He seems to be in serious agony at this point. So it seems likely he has already been run over once.