Cops Continue to Take Heat Over ‘Choking’ Photo

After photos depicting a Boston police officer with his hand on the neck of a bandana wearing protester made the rounds on the internet yesterday, the protester in the photo is contemplating legal action against the Boston police, according to a report in the Boston Globe.

http://tinyurl.com/cv8qx67

Boston march for Palestine land day

Hundreds of activists, led by young Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, took to the streets of Boston on March 30 as part of the Global March to Jerusalem, marking Palestine Land Day. The main demands were Free Palestine! No war on Iran or Syria! and Boycott Israel!

The demonstration was sponsored by the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights; the Boston United National Antiwar Coalition; the International Action Center; the Palestine Task Force of United for Justice with Peace; Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine; and Veterans for Peace, Chapter 9, Smedley Butler Brigade. It was supported by the Decolonize Boston, Anti-Oppression and People of Color working groups of Occupy Boston, who called for Indigenous rights from the Americas to Palestine.

The protest gathered in Copley Square and was opened by Salma Abu Ayyash, who spoke of the history of Palestine Land Day, commemorating the March 30, 1976, Palestinian general strike, protest and resistance against massive Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land, and the worldwide movement today to end Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Kade Crockford, a militant young lesbian and Boycott, Divest and Sanctions activist, condemned Israel for cynically trying to use lesbian/gay/bi/trans rights to posture as democratic while carrying out genocidal attacks on Gaza.

http://tinyurl.com/d695979

Tax Day Doesn’t Belong to the Tea Party Anymore

This year, if you say “Tax Day” and “social movement,” the Tea Party isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind. And if you go looking for a protest, you’ll likely find folks protesting against the tax evaders of the top 1 percent.

http://tinyurl.com/cjrtqnz

ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Stand Your Ground, Voter ID, Prison Privatization, AZ’s SB 1070

Apparently in response to the corporate exodus, and to the contradictions between ALEC’s stated mission and its policies, the organization issued a press release today stating they are “eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force that dealt with non-economic issues” and that they would be “redoubling our efforts on the economic front.”

CMD’s Executive Director Lisa Graves said:

“ALEC’s announcement is a partial victory for the power of grassroots citizen action, but for Americans concerned about brand-name corporations underwriting ALEC’s extreme agenda to make it more difficult for American citizens to vote and to protect armed vigilantes, ALEC’s PR maneuver to try to distance itself from its record of extremism is an empty gesture unless it and the corporations that have bankrolled its operations work to repeal ALEC-backed laws that have advanced the NRA’s agenda and that will impede citizens from voting in the coming elections.”

http://tinyurl.com/bqvs3cb

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 4/18/12” »

Trans Activist: Boston Police Abusive at Protest

A transgender activist says she was abused by a Tea Party member and a police officer while protesting a Tea Party rally in Boston Sunday and that fellow protesters were received rough treatment as well.

The Tea Party’s Patriots’ Day rally on Boston Common featured antigay speakers such as minister Scott Lively, MassResistance director Brian Camenker, and former Boston Herald columnist Don Feder, along with some focusing on economic and other issues. At least five groups demonstrated in opposition to the Tea Party message, including Occupy Boston’s Queer/Trans Direct Action Working Group, the website Back2Stonewall reports.

An altercation developed after Tea Party members grabbed a banner carried by one of the other opposition groups, Antifa, and protesters from Occupy Boston and others came to Antifa’s defense, a trans activist with Occupy Boston (pictured) told Back2Stonewall. Two of her group’s members were arrested, and as she followed them, a Tea Partyer knocked her wig off, claiming his hand slipped. Then, she said, a police officer came up and shoved her and said, “OK, take your shit and get out of here.” (The Advocate)

http://tinyurl.com/cfb888s

Boston patrolman photographed with hand around protester’s throat

A photo of a Boston police officer with his hand around a protester’s neck sparked outrage on the Internet and prompted an investigation by city officials yesterday.

A picture snapped by photographer Paul Weiskel during the Massachusetts Tea Party Coalition’s “Patriots Day Rally” on Sunday shows a Boston patrolman grabbing a masked individual by the throat. The alleged victim was part of a counterprotest.

“I was taking pictures of two kids in handcuffs and turned around to see this one cop with his hands around this kid’s neck,” Weiskel said, recalling Sunday’s rallies downtown. (Boston Metro)

http://tinyurl.com/ck9r7xf

Photos of Police Officer ‘Choking’ Counter-Protester Create Controversy

The photos, snapped by a UMass Boston junior, depict a Boston police officer with his hand on the neck of a man protesting the inclusion of anti-gay speakers at a Tea Party Tax Day Rally over the weekend. (South End Patch)

http://tinyurl.com/835egzq
Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 4/17/12” »

Ask Not Who’s Co-Opting You, Ask Whom You Can Co-Opt

In plenty of situations, the Occupy movement has known to stay on the offensive when it comes to co-option, not the defensive. The planning process for May Day in New York is a great example of that. By getting labor and community organizers in on the ground floor, and demanding that they follow Occupy rules, Occupiers have managed to draw these rigidly hierarchical institutions into an anarchist-style spokescouncil meeting format, and they’ve ensured that a massive march of labor and immigrant groups will coincide with the movement’s agitation for a general strike.

As for the 99% Spring. Of course these organizations and their Democratic Party allies would love to take advantage of the movement for their own ends – which include everything from reelecting Barack Obama to victories on environmental and labor issues. Who can blame them for trying? But it’s not like they were training 100,000 in nonviolent direct action last year, or in 2008, or on behalf of John Kerry. They’re doing it because the Wisconsin Uprising, and Tar Sands Action, and Occupy Wall Street all changed their sense of what is politically possible in this country, and they want to get in on it however they can.

Maybe it would be different if the Occupy movement itself were training 100,000 people in direct action right now, too. But it’s not. Tens of thousands people who’ve never done activism or civil disobedience are taking baby steps toward doing so, and Occupy can count that as a big victory – which it needs right now, since many of the occupations themselves have dwindled and most Americans seem to think that the movement is over.

http://tinyurl.com/cazuhw3

If 25,000 people rally in midtown, is that a story?

Absent the tent communities, shut down when cities barred Occupiers from sleeping in parks, it’s an open question whether most of the press outlets will be willing to provide substantive coverage of the issues raised by the protesters. It will be disappointing but not surprising if major press outlets provide coverage only when there is a police angle – that is, when there are mass arrests or injuries at one of the protests. Without decisions by editors to cover all aspects of protests and not just the arrests, it is likely that, once again, the substance and message of the various actions will be ignored or muffled.

Over the last few months, mainstream news outlets such as The New York Times and Washington Post generally adopted the story line that the Occupy movement was fading. The Times, for example, in its April 1 edition, all but pronounced the movement as being on life support in an article written by Michael S. Schmidt, a national reporter in the paper’s Washington bureau.

http://tinyurl.com/d6yqv3a

Media report: ‘99% Spring is the 2012 version of Occupy Wall Street’

When the 2012 version of “Occupy Wall Street” emerges from hibernation, it will be after having been to school.

A coalition of liberal, union, and progressive organizations hoping to capitalize on the success of last year’s Occupy movement held a series of “99% Spring Action Training” sessions in the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas Saturday.

http://tinyurl.com/bqdckqe

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 4/16/12” »

Reducing taxes on the wealthy to ‘kick start’ economic growth is dangerous to our national well-being

In practice, we therefore see that proposals to “kick start” economic growth through reductions in tax rates are in fact proposals to lower tax rates on the wealthy. The wealthy are assumed to be productive and innovative, in general. However, it’s obvious that some of the wealthy – and perhaps even very many of them – will decide to invest their increased income or wealth in socially less desirable or even dangerous activities. They may buy real estate, which can lead to a housing bubble; they may speculate on the stock market or in toxic mortgage backed securities etc. There is rarely a trickle down effect of these activities; incentivizing them by keeping taxes low won’t help anyone but the incentivized, and may even – in the longer term – cause recessions. One should be conscious of this risk when claiming that low taxes promote growth.
. . .

Another reason why low tax rates may not be particularly beneficial and perhaps even harmful to economic growth has to do with income inequality. The supposedly beneficial effect of low taxes on economic growth occurs not necessarily because everyone’s tax rates are low but rather because the productive and innovative segments of society and those who have the means to invest can benefit from low tax rates. The growth enhancing effects of low tax rates should be most obvious in those segments, although there may also be an effect for the rest of us. As stated before, the wealthy are often a proxy for those segments, given the difficulty of identifying the really productive and innovative individuals and of targeting tax reductions at them.

This means that low tax rates will tend to exacerbate income inequality. There is some evidence that income inequality reduces growth  and that it leads to credit bubbles, financial crises and recession.

http://tinyurl.com/cxubndy

Increasingly in Europe, Suicides ‘by Economic Crisis’

On New Year’s Eve, Antonio Tamiozzo, 53, hanged himself in the warehouse of his construction business near Vicenza, after several debtors did not pay what they owed him.

Three weeks earlier, Giovanni Schiavon, 59, a contractor, shot himself in the head at the headquarters of his debt-ridden construction company on the outskirts of Padua. As he faced the bleak prospect of ordering Christmas layoffs at his family firm of two generations, he wrote a last message: “Sorry, I cannot take it anymore.”

The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”

http://tinyurl.com/chg7dg9

Second victim in Modesto eviction shooting was a locksmith

The Stanislaus County Coroner’s office released the name of a locksmith fatally shot Thursday at a Modesto apartment when he accompanied a deputy trying to serve an eviction notice.

Glendon Engert, 35, of Modesto was one of two men killed by a gunman who authorities say opened fire as authorities attempted to evict him. The deputy, 16-year veteran Robert Paris, was also fatally wounded.

http://tinyurl.com/cdmm3zw

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 4/15/12” »