Framing the ‘RNC 8’

By Sam Stoker, In These Times
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The city that became a battlefield between police and protesters, who took to the streets during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in early September, is now embroiled in a new fight — a legal battle over freedom of speech and assembly.
In an unprecedented application of Minnesota’s [...]

Leftover Crack and the Cops

By Maria Luisa Tucker,Graham Rayman
The Village Voice
For months now, the members of Leftover Crack, a punk band known for songs like “One Dead Cop” and “Nazi White Trash,” have been complaining that the police have been pressuring night club managers to block their performances.
Police officers in Brooklyn visited several club managers and threatened to shut [...]

Mohawk Protesters Stop Cop-Shop Construction

Installation of police facility delayed ‘until further notice’
Posted By STEPHEN PETRICK, THE INTELLIGENCER
The installation of a new police building here has been delayed “until further notice,” after a group of band members set up a blockade Tuesday to protest its arrival.
Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte officials were preparing to have a 4,635-square-foot building shipped [...]

Minnesota Food Not Bombs homes and offices raided. Volunteers arrested.

Crackdown Begins: Food Not Bombs House Among Saturday Raids Ahead of
RNC. Food Not Bombs volunteer arrested in Denver and Berkeley office
raided on Wednesday.
As the all volunteer movement Food Not Bombs prepares to respond to
Hurricane Gustav the police and FBI raid several Food Not Bombs houses
in Minneapolis and a office in Berkeley where police seized 13
computers.

Guelph Woodsquat faces eviction

Young people living off the grid instructed to move elsewhere
Nicole Visschedyk, Guelph Mercury
The dozen or so people who have lived off the grid on a piece of city property near the intersection of Stone Road East and Victoria Road North for the last few months may soon be homeless.
The group, in their late teens and [...]

Walkers get the boot from city streets

(Yesterday was obviously police oppression day in the CRD. First I read news of Saanich Police using helicopters to look for homeless people, now I read about the Victoria Police disrupting the beginning of an important and sacred journey for my friend Rose and the other First Nations women involved in the Walk For Justice. [...]

Saanich police use helicopter to spot homeless in parks

(this is some serious bullshit. How much more proof does anyone need that there is a war on the homeless in the greater Victoria region? Who for one believes the bullshit excuses they use for this tactic? It doesn’t cost them anything because they already have the flight time paid for? Well use it for [...]

2010 Security Plans ‘On-Track’ Say Organizers

Critical report off base, say organizers
Clare Ogilvie, The Province
Olympic security officials are refuting a report that charges they are not doing enough to protect the Games.
“Our security planning is on track, and Vancouver 2010 [Integrated Security Unit] is continuing to grow proportionately to our planning needs,” RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Gursharn Bernier said yesterday.
“We are on [...]

CSIS watching extremist Olympic protesters

Jorge Barrera, Canwest News Service
Canada’s spy agency has been monitoring anti-Olympic activities for more than a year and found the strongest opposition to the athletic event to be among “the more extreme elements” of First Nations groups, particularly in alliance with anti-poverty groups, according to an internal government document obtained by Canwest News Service.

Anti-Poverty Committee Response to anti-2010 activist scare

-from APC
For once police ‘intelligence’ has gotten it right when they predicted
that protests against the 2010 games will become more ‘intense’.
Still confused though, the RCMP has warned that such actions will increase
in violence; of course it’s not violent when they taser someone to death.
The APC scoffs at the allegations of violence and repeats, ‘the disruption
targeting [...]