repression
The Militarization of Pittsburgh: Street Report From the G20
Submitted by onion on Tue, 2009-11-24 16:08
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.
Fallout from police repression at the G20 protests in Pittsburgh
Submitted by onion on Tue, 2009-11-24 16:05
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.
G20 Report Back
Submitted by onion on Wed, 2009-09-30 18:24
We just got back from Pittsburgh after traveling across the state, connecting personally with some local struggles and participating in exciting actions and protests against our global ruling elite's neoliberal agenda. Despite a veritable police state in Pittsburgh, the time was inspiring and rewarding enough we felt we should send out this report back to those who couldn't make it. We also temporarily lost a caravaner who was wrongfully arrested while filming some of the police repression in the streets, so we're combining this with an urgent appeal for funds for his release!
Attention, MOVE: This is America!
Submitted by onion on Wed, 2009-05-13 11:13
At the 24th anniversary of the May 13 massacre, MOVE organizes for 2009 Parole Hearings
By Hans Bennett
(Born Black Magazine, May 2009)
“Attention, MOVE: This Is America! You must abide by the laws of the United States!” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sambor declared through a loudspeaker, minutes before the May 13, 1985 police assault on the revolutionary MOVE organization’s home. This assault killed 5 children and 6 adults, including MOVE founder John Africa. That morning police shot over 10,000 rounds of bullets into their West Philadelphia home, and detonated explosives on the front, and both sides of their house. Following an afternoon standstill, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on MOVE’s roof. The bomb started a fire that eventually destroyed 60 homes: the entire block of a middle-class black neighborhood. 13-year old Birdie Africa and 30-year old Ramona Africa were the only survivors, after they dodged police gunfire and escaped from the fire with permanent burn scars. (watch video)
The Angola Three: Guilty of Practicing “Black Pantherism” Cruel and unusual punishment at a modern-day slave plantation
Submitted by onion on Wed, 2009-04-15 23:51
By Hans Bennett
“My soul cries from all that I witnessed and endured. It does more than cry, it mourns continuously,” said Black Panther Robert Hillary King, following his release from the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 2001, after serving his last 29 years in continuous solitary confinement. King argues that slavery persists in Angola and other US prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." King says: “You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent.”
Since his release, King has fought tirelessly for the freedom of his imprisoned comrades Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who are the two co-founders of the Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP)—the only official prison chapter of the BPP. They have now spent over 36 years in solitary confinement. Together, they are known as the Angola Three, a trio of BPP political prisoners whose supporters include Amnesty International, Desmond Tutu, Congressman John Conyers, and the ACLU. Kgalema Mothlante, the President of South Africa says their case “has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire US system.” King, Woodfox, and Wallace’s federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that their time in solitary confinement is “cruel and unusual punishment,” will go to trial any month in Baton Rouge, at the U.S. Middle District Court.
Activist counter-intelligence: leaked fbi document
Submitted by onion on Wed, 2009-04-15 22:27
Wikileaks.org, the site responsible for leaking a multitude of useful documents to media and activists, has posted an article titled, "FBI: Tactics Used by Eco-Terrorists to Detect and Thwart Law Enforcement Operations, 15 Apr 2004," an appraisal of counterintelligence resources in our community.
HRC-FedUp! URGENT Action Alert: 6 Prisoners Assaulted in the SMU at Camp Hill
Submitted by onion on Tue, 2009-02-17 13:30
Chemical and electro-shock weapons used
Racist violence and repression on the rise again
Take action Today Tomorrow and Next Week.
Forward further and wider than ever because enough is enough!
On January 20, 2009 guards in the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the State Correctional [sic] Institution (SCI) in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania assaulted six prisoners, reportedly citing as reasons that these men file grievances against guard misconduct and are engaged in civil litigation against DOC officials; contact outside organizations (HRC/Fed Up! and www.prisoners.com in particular) to expose conditions of torture; also to send a message-in their words: "fuck a historical day, y'all always going to be niggers."
URGENT! Leonard Peltier's Safety in Jeopardy!--Take Action Today and Tomorrow and the Next . . .
Submitted by onion on Fri, 2009-01-23 13:07
Fed Up! Asks the Emergency Response Network to Mobilize in Defense of Leonard Peltier 
Below find an email from Leonard Peltier's sister regarding an assault perpetrated against her brother at the federal prison in Canaan, Pennsylvania. Please take action immediately and join me in calling all the numbers below, spread the word, and continue to monitor the situation. We have each other's backs, whether its our loved ones or those loved by others, let's pull together.
Leonard Peltier is an indigenous political prisoner who has spent 33 years held captive by the state for the killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975, while the agents were engaging in a murderous counterinsurgency campaign to destroy the American Indian Movement. During an appeal of his conviction in the 1980s, the state admitted that they have no idea who killed the FBI agents. Despite this admission on the part of the government, Leonard continues to be held as a reminder to the first peoples of this land so as to terrorize them into submission to state and corporate plans to steal the rest of their land and resources, including and especially water, incarcerate the indigenous at the highest rate in the country, and perpetuate policy-drive conditions of dire poverty and disease.
Leonard's life must be protected and his freedom must be fought for with a renewed urgency. The fate of the people of this land is bound up with the fate of the first peoples, and we have to make any and every effort to understand and resist the endgame of a centuries long process of genocide. This cannot be allowed to pass.
URGENT ALERT! Leonard Peltier's safety is in jeopardy!
Submitted by onion on Fri, 2009-01-23 13:03
Dear LP Supporters
I am so OUTRAGED! My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. When he went into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.
The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly a concussion, and numerous bruises. Also, one of his fingers is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and ribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.
