September 1 - 6, 2008

Fascist state at its best.

Goodman Charged with Obstruction; Felony Riot Charges Pending Against Kouddous and Salazar
ST. PAUL--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.
All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.
On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as well as the broader police action. These will also be available on: www.democracynow.org

Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Over 300 Protesters, Bystanders, Medics and Media Arrested: Update from Coldsnap Legal Collective
Submitted by haloka on Wed, 09/03/2008 - 02:08.

Two days into the Republican National Convention (RNC), more than 300 people have been arrested, including at least 120 people for felonies -- mostly the notoriously vague charge, 'conspiracy to riot.' With no provocation, police have indiscriminately used rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and chemical irritants to disperse crowds and incapacitate protesters. Police appear to be specifically targeting videographers documenting these police abuses.
Read more: http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/sep/over-300-protesters-bystanders-medics-and-media-arrested-update-coldsnap-legal-collective
Good ideas of how to help real victims from New Orleans.
http://gustavsolidarity.org/category/frontpage/http://www.cghc.org/

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign Takes Cause to Streets Outside RNC
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/3/poor_peoples_economic_human_rights_campaign

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign

http://www.economichumanrights.org/index.shtml

As Unlawful Arrests Continue, St. Paul Feels Like a City Under Siege

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:22:08 -0500
Summary:
“We wish to make something clear to the servants of the enemy: You freely chose to wear a uniform and serve the enemy. You are humans, just like us. We fully understand this simple fact. Some of you may attempt to defend your actions by stating that you are merely doing your job and that you should be treated with the same respect we would show any other human. But you have not and will not treat us with that respect you so desire from us. And so not only will we not respect you, we will treat as we would treat any human who freely chooses to beat, torture and murder those most dear to us. If you attack us, we will fight back. If you hurt a single one of us, we will hurt you. We will not fall to our knees and accept your beatings. You do not know who or what you are dealing with. Your masters, those vapid men and women in suits whom you will guarding, know who we are. And that is why they have called thousands of you to guard them in another of their temporary fortresses. They are terrified. And you are their expendable servants. Tread lightly, for we are not to be trifled with. The planet is being killed by the people you are protecting. The country you claim to love so dearly is rotting from the inside out. You are running out of time. You will have to make a choice soon. One day, just as it was for your Nazi predecessors, it will be too late.” — A Declaration of War
http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/18227/As_Unlawful_Arrests_Continue_St_Paul_Feels_Like_a_City_Under_Siege

Friday, September 5,2008

Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by The Christian Science Monitor
Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature
by Eoin O'Carroll
Ecuador's proposed constitution includes an article that grants nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution" and will grant legal standing to any person to defend those rights in court.

A sea lion pup on Santiago Island, one of Ecuador's famed Galapagos Islands. (MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF/FILE)
Voters will get to decide on Sept. 28 whether to adopt the new constitution, which would allow the president to run for reelection, to dissolve Congress, and to exert great control over the country's central bank. According to Reuters, 56 percent of Ecuadorans approve of the proposed document.
The blog Green Change quotes the five articles that acknowledge rights said to be possessed by nature, or "Pachamama," a goddess revered by indigenous Andean peoples whose name roughly translates into "Mother Earth."
Chapter: Rights for Nature
Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.
Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.
Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.
Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.
Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.
The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.
The concept that nature itself can possess rights runs counter to the classical liberal theories of government that hold sway throughout much of the West, which view rights as possessed only by individual human beings. But Ecuador is not the first country to propose granting rights to nonhuman entities: Many countries, including the United States, have long held that corporations possess many of the same rights - such as the rights to free expression and to due process - that human beings have. And in June, Spain's parliament approved a measure to extend some human rights to nonhuman apes.
But, as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times observes, Ecuador's extension of rights to nature may represent a larger shift in how humans view their place in the world:
No other country has gone as far as Ecuador in proposing to give trees their day in court, but it certainly is not alone in its recalibration of natural rights. Religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop of Constantinople, have declared that caring for the environment is a spiritual duty. And earlier this year, the Catholic Church updated its list of deadly sins to include polluting the environment.
Ecuador is codifying this shift in sensibility. In some ways, this makes sense for a country whose cultural identity is almost indistinguishable from its regional geography - the Galapagos, the Amazon, the Sierra. How this new area of constitutional law will work, however, is another question. We aren't ready to endorse such a step at home, or even abroad. But it's intriguing. We'll be watching Ecuador's example.

Eight Members of RNC Activist Group Lodged with Terrorism Charges
Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/4/eight_members_of_rnc_activist_group
“Ramsey County prosecutors have formally charged eight members of a prominent activist group with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. The eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee are believed to be the first persons ever charged under the 2002 Minnesota version of the federal PATRIOT Act. The activists face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison.”
BRUCE NESTOR: These charges are very significant for any political activist or anybody that cares about the right to organize politically or for freedom of speech. By equating plans or stated plans to blockade traffic and to try to disrupt the convention with acts of terrorism, the conspiracy nature of the charge, where you punish people for what they say or advocate, but not for what they do, really creates a possibility that anybody organizing a large-scale demonstration, at which civil disobedience may be a part of it or where other individuals may then engage in some type of property damage, creates the potential that all those organizers can be charged with these conspiracy charges and face significant penalties.
One of the arrested is Monica Bicking.
Learn more about one of the arrested “terrorist”:
DAVID BICKING: —very committed. She’s twenty-three. And she and all the people—I mean, the people they have charged here are not criminals. They’re some of the best people in our society. She’s really dedicated to her activism. She’s experienced activist already. She’s come about this through her own experience in her life over a long time. She is always concerned about the feelings of others.
She has done some travel abroad. And when she was eight, we were in Ecuador for four weeks, and she saw the poverty and the children begging, but also humanized it by playing with the children, the maids in the, you know, inexpensive hotels there. She has—went to Honduras for eight weeks after her junior year to work in a very remote village, humanitarian work.
After high school, she took off a year before college and worked as an intern with the American Friends Service Committee, which is a Quaker peace group. She was based in Chicago and helped in their organizing and their peace work and liaison with other groups.
So she has a lot of experience, and she’s really seen what it means when—you know, the United States’ actions through war, through injustice at home, through poverty and how that’s affected people’s lives. And it’s affected her very deeply. And so, she’s strong. She’ll get through this one way or the other.
AMY GOODMAN: Is she still in jail?
DAVID BICKING: She is still in jail right now.