OCCUPY WALL STREET

[Cin]

http://www.truth-out.org/problem-cit...ood/1326497162

I thought this was a really interesting article. It talks about how the Supreme Court did not base it's decision regarding Citizens United on corporate personhood or the 14th amendment at all. Instead it went for a bizarre interpretation of the 1st amendment and free speech needing to be protected for those who have the right to listen. I guess to listen to campaign speeches and such. I guess that means its protecting me and my right to hear the crap these politicians have to say. Nobody seemed that interested in free speech when the angle is talking instead of listening as witnessed by the treatement of Occupy protestors. But I digress. The article also talks about a simpler way to overturn the Supreme Courts decisions surrounding Citizens United and earlier rulings regarding money in politics, than trying to get an amendment to the constitution. It's a long article but I found it worth the read.

[Cin]

Prosecutors aim new weapon at Occupy activists: lynching allegation

By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching.

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," where "riot" is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405(a) was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups.
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Whether the police allegation in this case will be pursued by by California’s courts is uncertain. But the felony charge — which carries a potential four-year prison sentence — is the kind of accusation that can change the landscape for would-be demonstrators.

"Felonies really heighten the stakes for the protesters," said Baher Azmy, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "I think in situations where there are mass demonstrations and a confrontation between protesters and police, one always has to be on the lookout for exaggerated interpretations of legal rules that attempt to punish or squelch the protesters."

Ballesteros, a teacher-turned-social-activist, was one of two people arrested during an "art walk" in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. He and other Occupy LA activists — maybe 200, he said — had joined the procession to bring their message about social injustice to the thousands of gallery-goers.

Adam Alders, a protester who was playing a drum was arrested after stepping off the curb into the street. Ballesteros said that in doing so, the drummer was joining hundreds of other people who could not fit on the crowded sidewalk.

Ballesteros said he was across the street when he saw the arrest — which he said looked excessively rough -- and it was “startling.” Under legal advice, Ballesteros is not providing additional detail, but apparently he objected — in some fashion — to the arrest. A video of the crowded scene posted on YouTube shows Ballesteros on the ground, being handcuffed.

The police report says officers called for backup when Ballesteros pulled Alders out into the crowd, which was "hostile."

A video of the event shows the crowd chanting "let him go!"

He was booked into jail on a felony charge, the Los Angeles Police department confirmed, and released on $50,000 bail early Tuesday morning.

Ballesteros is not the first protester to face this 1933 California law.

Occupy Oakland activist Tiffany Tran, 23, was arrested Dec. 30 and charged with "lynching." At an arraignment four days later, prosecutors opted not to file the charges, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported. They could change their decision until the one-year statute of limitations expires.

"Now I feel I can’t go out and express myself as I should be able to," Tran told the paper.

In the handful of protest cases in which lynching has been used as a charge in the past, it later has been dropped. However, in one case, a court concluded that “lynching” could include “a person who takes part in a riot leading to his escape from custody."

Many states have laws against lynching — largely drafted to prevent white supremacists and other vigilante groups from using violence against African Americans and white people who supported them. Hundreds of lynchings of this sort took place in the late 1800s through the mid-1900s.

Ballesteros' lawyer said use of this law was perhaps less appealing to the District Attorney than to the police.

Ballesteros is an activist outside the Occupy movement -- building homes through Habitat for Humanity during his spring breaks, aiding at a children's camp for the poorest kids in the Appalachians during the summer, and acting as mentor for disadvantaged kids in the Los Angeles area.

"Whether the District Attorney has the stomach to charge this model young man with a felony is questionable," saidd Mieke ter Poorten, an LA criminal defense attorney who is handling this case pro bono.

Ballesteros, who spoke to msnbc.com on Tuesday, said that he does not believe he will be convicted of lynching.

“They don’t have much,” he said of the case against him.

He also faces a misdemeanor charge for his arrest Nov. 30, when he was among more than 200 people who defied eviction from an encampment on the grounds of Los Angeles' City Hall. There was an arraignment for protesters arrested that day, but they were told no charges yet had been filed.

“They have a year to do so,” said Ballesteros. "Now they certainly will. It’s obvious. It’s all political.”

[Cin]

Lynching the Dream
Thursday 19 January 2012
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

This past Monday, this nation celebrated the memory of one of our greatest minds, one of our tallest souls, one of our lost children. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrates the memory of our American Gandhi, a man who dedicated his life - and, in Memphis, gave his life - to the idea that is America: all are created equal.

To be sure, the "Negro" was counted only as 3/5ths of a man in the document that first established the ridiculous experiment that became America, and women were counted not at all, but more than two hundred years have passed since that original ink was put to paper. Ours is a self-improving republic, thanks to the genius of those founding documents. A "Negro" now sits in the highest office of the land, and a woman (who lost the chance to sit in that exalted seat by only an eyelash or two) now commands the most important and influential position in the Federal government, save the one enjoyed by her immediate superior.

Ours is a nation of genius, and of assassins, in equal measure. We reached the moon, cracked the genome code, we feed millions, liberated Europe and Asia from horrific tyranny sixty years ago, and daily export the idea that one should be able to speak their mind without fear of the gulag or the work camp or the executioner's bullet...and yet we do this even as the souls of slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and ten times ten thousand Iraqis shriek their condemnation from the blood this nation has spilled in its pursuit of "greatness."

I have been preaching this gospel, in word and deed, for almost twenty years: America is an idea. You can take our cities, our roads, whatever is left of our manufacturing base, our crops, our armies, our weapons, you can take the land itself from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon...you can take it all, and the idea that is America will still remain, as robust and vital as the day it was first conceived. It is the idea that sustains me, the brilliant simplicity of actual equality, and it is the offenses to the idea that I have pledged my life against.

Some will argue that I and those who believe as I do are doomed to failure. Perhaps this is true; the forces arrayed against what I and others of like mind hold true and dear are stupendous, overwhelming, and well-placed in money and in media. Even the "Hope and Change" president of the present maintains and extends the elaborate shame of our past, apparently deaf to the howls of those of us who would have him, and us, do right at long last.

It is what it is, as someone once said. You look for a toehold, a place to grab on to, a front - no matter how meager - from which to wage your own siege, against all that has gone so catastrophically wrong with this old experiment, in trying to do right.

We define ourselves through comparison to that which we oppose. In this, we are seldom lacking in inspiration. Take, for example, this report about the newest way the Powers That Be have chosen to crush and prosecute the Occupy movement. It isn't enough for a prosecutor to charge a protester who has been beaten and Maced by police with assault. No, we're going here:

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge - lynching.

Whether the police allegation in this case will be pursued by by California's courts is uncertain. But the felony charge - which carries a potential four-year prison sentence - is the kind of accusation that can change the landscape for would-be demonstrators.

"Felonies really heighten the stakes for the protesters," said Baher Azmy, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "I think in situations where there are mass demonstrations and a confrontation between protesters and police, one always has to be on the lookout for exaggerated interpretations of legal rules that attempt to punish or squelch the protesters."

Lynching: "For many African Americans growing up in the South in the 19th and 20th centuries, the threat of lynching was commonplace. The popular image of an angry white mob stringing a black man up to a tree is only half the story. Lynching, an act of terror meant to spread fear among blacks, served the broad social purpose of maintaining white supremacy in the economic, social and political spheres."

Once upon a time, the (lily-white) power structure used lynching as a means of maintaining control. Now, in the shadow of the holiday celebrating Dr. King's life and work, they are deploying this accusation in order to punish and prosecute people who have exercised the right gifted by this idea, this country, this place of alleged freedom: the right to speak your piece, "to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The idea remains intact, even after so prolonged an assault from so determined a foe.

It is, as ever, worth fighting for. As Dr. King said, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

Dig in, people.

Dig in deep.

The Promised Land is far and wee, and all we have in the meantime is ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, each other, and the promise of an idea that - with our blood, sweat, and toil - may yet be fulfilled.

[SoNotHer]

Two Ladies Followed Obama To The Apollo Last Night And This Is What They Said



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