Gov. Rick Scott, who signed the measure into law on May 31, touted it as a way to ensure taxpayer money isn’t “wasted” on those who use drugs. “Hopefully more people will focus on not using illegal drugs,” he said then. But, in her order, Scriven issued a scathing assessment of the state’s argument in…
Category: Liberty
Oakland Police Use Rubber Bullets, Flash Grenades, And Smoke Bombs To Evict Occupy Oakland
Late last night, Oakland police, under orders from the city, began surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment in preparation to oust the protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza.Approximately an hour ago, hundreds of Oakland police officers raided the camp. Dressed in riot gear, the police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, and gas canisters to forcibly evict and/or…
Police pepper spray Haka dancers at football game
Union High School and Football field. Looks like plenty of exits. The group in Roosevelt, a town of 8,000, had traveled about 125 miles east from the Salt Lake City area to watch a relative play his final game for Union, which lost to rival Uintah and finished the season without a victory. The group…
Rediscovering Civil Disobedience
“There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal,” proclaimed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he took a risk and spoke out forcefully against the War in Vietnam. As more Americans debate whether to leave the sidelines and join the Occupy Wall Street movement, we should heed Dr. King’s words. Our individual silence is…
Civil Rights Activist Jesse Jackson Stops NYPD From Taking Occupy Wall Street Medical Tent
Soon after 11:25 p.m. last night, NYPD officers moved into Zuccotti Park to try to remove Occupy Wall Street’s medical tent, as the park owners are currently trying to remove tents and sleeping equipment from the area. Yet as Animal New York reports, demonstrators locked arms and refused to allow police to go near the…
How Democrats can use Occupy protests to their advantage
Republicans initially overreacted, as if Karl Marx had risen from the grave. Mitt Romney was so flustered that he almost mussed his hair. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, surveying the small protest encampments in New York and other cities, called them “growing mobs” that threatened public order. Within a week, however, Cantor was backing away…
No GOP Senator Supports Bill to Protect Cloud E-Mail Privacy
Leahy’s bill would amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Adopted when CompuServe was king, ECPA allows the government to acquire a suspect’s e-mail or other stored content from an internet service provider without showing probable cause that a crime was committed, as long as the content had been stored on a third-party server…
The 99 Percent Rise Up
This has been a year of agitation, from Wisconsin to Ohio to Washington. It has seen some of the largest demonstrations in recent American history in defense of labor rights, public education, public services. But all those uprisings attacked symptoms of the disease. Occupy Wall Street named it. By aiming activism not at the government…
After Zuccotti Park: Seven Privately Owned Public Spaces to Occupy Next
Privately owned public spaces have proliferated in the past several decades—there are almost 550 in New York City—as a result of zoning concessions the city grants to real estate developers: in exchange for setting aside a nominally public space, property owners such as Brookfield are allowed to bypass height or setback restrictions on…
Financiers for Occupying Wall Street [interview]
A few days ago, the Huffington Post sent me a press alert saying that Mohammed el-Erian had written a blog post warning readers to “listen to Occupy Wall Street.” That caught my eye. For those who don’t know el-Erian, he’s a co-CEO of PIMCO, one of the world’s largest — and wealthiest — bond trading…
Disturbing Video: Police Abduct Bank Customer off the Street
In what may be one of the most disturbing videos yet to come from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, a Citibank customer is seen snatched off the street by police, and forced into the bank, presumably to be held and then arrested. In the video, the woman, wearing business attire, is confronted by a man…
“Occupy” Movement Spreads Around the World
Apparently inspired by the so-called Arab Spring movements in the Middle East and North Africa, the Occupy Wall Street movement began almost as a curiosity, largely ignored by the media, political leaders, and even NYC law enforcement. However, the movement began to grow. As conservative elements began to denigrate OWS and distance themselves, and liberal elements…
OWS: Cop Punches Demonstrator to the Ground
Yesterday, there were several reports of clashes with the police during the Occupy Wall Street march celebrating the reprieve from the cleaning of Zuccotti park, and the possible dismantling of the protest infrastructure. There were fourteen reported arrests, and major news outlets reported that police drove police scooters at and over protesters in order to…
NYPD Drives Over Protesters
The demonstrators in New York began to move toward Wall Street after it was revealed the owners of Zuccotti Park — home to the protest camp — had ditched a plan to clean the park that some claimed was a pretext to evict them. NBC News reported that police used the scooters…
Fact Check: Mayor Menino Falsely Claims Arrested Occupy Boston Members Are ‘Outsiders’ From ‘Another Country’
On early Tuesday morning, Boston police violently arrested 141 members of Occupy Boston for expanding their peaceable assembly to a new encampment without city authorization. The number of activists participating in the occupation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the heart of Boston’s financial district has steadily grown since the beginning of October,…
Occupy Wall Street: Zuccotti Park Cleanup Called Off, Say NY Officials
The cleanup of a plaza in lower Manhattan where protesters have been camped out for a month was postponed early Friday, sending cheers up from a crowd that had feared the effort was merely a pretext to evict them. Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties,…
Occupy Detroit plans march today
Protesters are gearing up for a march and occupation of Detroit today, which could last for 60 days.The Occupy Detroit group — inspired by the protests on Wall Street seeking social, political and economic change — plans to meet at 4 p.m. today at the Spirit of Detroit statute on Woodward. The group will…
Occupy Wall Street vs. The Arab Spring
A short film juxtaposing the two movements, with words from our leaders.
Alabama Immigration Law: Protesters Stage Work Stoppages, Shut Down Businesses
At least a half-dozen poultry plants shut down or scaled back operations Wednesday and many other businesses closed as Hispanics in Alabama skipped work to protest the state’s toughest-in-the-nation immigration law. The work stoppage was aimed at demonstrating the economic contribution of Alabama’s Hispanic immigrants. It was unclear exactly how widespread the protests…
Boston Police Throw American Flag To Ground, Arrest Veterans, Trash Property To Protect ‘Green Space’ From 99 Percent
In one of the largest mass arrests in recent Boston history, the Boston Police Department cleared a park of activists with the 99 Percent Movement in the early hours of Tuesday morning, dismantling and destroying tents that had been set up on Monday. Startling footage shot by an onlooker shows members of Veterans for Peace,…