by Robert Saleem Holbrook

The G20 in Pittsburgh showed us how pitifully fearful our leaders have become.

By Bill Quigley
from CounterPunch.org

The G20 in Pittsburgh showed us how pitifully fearful our leaders have become.

What no terrorist could do to us, our own leaders did.

Out of fear of the possibility of a terrorist attack, authorities militarize our towns, scare our people away, stop daily life and quash our constitutional rights.
For days, downtown Pittsburgh, home to the G20, was turned into a militarized people-free ghost town. Sirens screamed day and night. Helicopters crisscrossed the skies. Gunboats sat in the rivers. The skies were defended by Air Force jets. Streets were barricaded by huge cement blocks and fencing. Bridges were closed with National Guard troops across the entrances. Public transportation was stopped downtown. Amtrak train service was suspended for days.
In many areas, there were armed police every 100 feet. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Tens of thousands were unable to work.

Two friends of the defenestrator collective are looking at some serious legal situations

Trev

Trev, local autonomous cop watcher often admired for his laid back ghetto fashion edge, was jumped by an army of riot cops while filming an arrest during street confrontations. Police smashed his camera, beat Trev and locked him up. It hurt to leave him in Pittsburgh for a week, but he was refused bond, forcing a small group of people to raise $15000 to get him out.

Building a Movement

A severe housing crisis exists in the United States. All across the country, despite courageous struggles against divestment, land speculation and gentrification, public housing communities are being permanently displaced as developments are razed to the ground. Millions of families have been dispossessed of their homes, wrongly evicted and displaced from their communities by the escalating foreclosure crisis. Homelessness is escalating to levels unseen since the 1930’s as a direct result of the various forces of displacement stated above and economic dislocation from increased automation, deindustrialization, and the globalization of production.

Honduran and American Activists Dispel U.S. Media Lies

see breaking news | video

by Joanna Grim

In light of the overall absence of coverage by the mainstream news media, and the printing of misleading information concerning the situation in Honduras one month after a military coup ousted the democratically-elected President Manuel Zalaya in papers such as our own Philadelphia Inquirer – which prints deceptive articles such as Rick Santorum’s op-ed likening opposition of the coup to “going against democracy” and yet declines to print op-eds submitted by local activists and educators hoping to bring another perspective to the Inquirer’s readers –  Philadelphians have to ask “What inquiries are being made?” “What story is being told?” “Whose interests are being served?”

by seedless

In a time of fiscal crisis and poor leadership we find a noble character with a vision of resistance, discovering solutions where others only see problems. IBtheMC (not to be confused with IB4eva, host of the gathering) a Native Philadelphian discovered his gift for music particularly rap/hip-hop early on.  At the age of six, with the help of his mother he learned his first rap, by age nine he had begum to appear in local showcase’s and talent shows.  However like many urbanites he fell victim to negative elements in the community which led him astray from his path of music, and in to repeated confrontations with police, culminating in his being tried as an adult at age 16 and incarcerated for over a year as an adult. 

Most Powerful Landlord in East Harlem, Multi-National Dawnay, Day Group, Comes Crashing Down

from Movement for Justice in El Barrio

October 14, 2009—In a battle of David and Goliath proportions, tenants and members of Movement for Justice in El Barrio fought back against the attempts of the multi-billion dollar London-based corporation Dawnay, Day Group to push low-income families from their homes.

The U.S. makes up 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners.

The vast majority of the world’s prisoners held in long-term solitary confinement are in U.S. Prisons.

The U.S. is the only country in the world that officially sanctions the juvenile death penalty.

The U.S. is alone in sentencing young teenagers to die in prison.

Over the past thirty years the U.S. quadrupled incarceration rates but not prison space.

by Bronwyn Lepore

Rhetorically, the use of logic – facts, statistics, syllogisms – ethics and emotion to convince should have an effect on a reader or listener. Ideally, truth and knowledge produce responsibility and change. Yet in the U.S. the pronouncement of facts that should cause alarm, awareness and action are far too commonly met with resistance, scorn and a disregard for human and civil rights. In the conclusion to his damning report in The New Yorker “Hellhole: Is Long-term Solitary Confinement Torture?”(30 March 2009) Atul Gawande writes “public sentiment in America is the reason that solitary confinement has exploded in this country, even as other Western nations have taken steps to reduce it...with little concern or demurral, we have consigned tens of thousands of our own citizens to conditions that horrified our highest court a century ago.” “In much the same way,” he continues, “that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture” - at home and abroad.

Michael Moore’s New Film Names the System and Presents a Radical Democratic Critique

by Alex Knight, October 15, 2009

Capitalism: A Love Story, which opened in 962 theaters earlier this month, is Michael Moore’s most ambitious work yet - taking aim at the root cause behind the injustices he’s exposed in his other films over the last 20 years. This time capitalism itself is the culprit to be maligned in Moore’s trademark docu-tragi-comic style. And by using the platform of a major motion picture to make a direct assault at the root of the problem, Moore has created space in the political mainstream for a radical conversation (radical meaning “going to the root”).