Four days of events were scheduled, according to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox pages, from panels to teach-ins and concerts . At noon today a march began at Layfayette Park, proceeding through China Town and ending at the Capitol where there will/was be a brief rally. Along the march route we will be stopping at designated intersections and locations for mini rallies, actions and speakers.
Tweets will go backward in time; if you can’t see them in their entirety, hold down Control, press -, then press +, and they should justify.
https://twitter.com/MikePrysner/status/579382254679408641
Anti-austerity, anti-racism/fascism rallies around the world:
Tens of thousands march through Dublin to protest against water charges; Irish government’s austerity measure has sparked widespread public anger, with Saturday’s street protest the fourth since October
And a special, parting gift from Rebelutionary_Z ;-) Wooot! Boots and the Coup!
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Another unarmed black man killed by Cleveland police. Oh, yes, he was robbing the place, cigarettes and coins, and needed capital punishment.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/21/black-teen-shot-police-cleveland-protest-brandon-jones
‘University Honor Student Beaten by Cops For Fake ID Was Using REAL ID’
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/03/university-honor-student-beaten-by-cops-for-fake-id-was-using-real-id/
“Martese Johnson is a University of Virginia (UVA) honor student with no criminal record. But getting good grades and behaving himself didn’t prevent him from being beaten bloody and arrested by Virginia’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The VDABC is the agency which enforces the state’s alcohol laws.
UVA’s Cavalier Daily, reports that Johnson was charged with “resisting arrest, obstructing justice without threats of force, and profane swearing or intoxication.”
But all who witnessed the beating say that Johnson was “brutalized” by officers. Photos of the incident seem to confirm that, and then some…”
At least they didn’t kill him.
Amnesty International is having some sort of convention. The black activists among them just made some demands. Interesting.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/amnestym2m
the best i can figure out from bouncing around to different accounts is: amnesty *may have held* their first-ever domestic convention/whatever in ferguson.
cornell fresh remarked that black participants had ‘had to create their own safe space, wtf’? a couple others remarked that ‘black employees’ of the organization have been traumatized by their experiences in the organization, quoting white privilege, as no board members are black. here are few copy/paste text tweets:
Loctavia Butler @LovnMyLocs
Use your resources as a white org to educate your members on anti-racism and anti-racist organizing domestically. #HowToBringHumanRightsHome
KayRay @RE_invent_ED
Every member of management especially the board of @amnesty should go thru anti-racism training #HowToBringHumanRightsHome #AmnestyM2M
KayRay @RE_invent_ED
Don’t co-opt a movement built by black people and not be in their communities doing work. #HowToBringHumanRightsHome #AmnestyM2M
it was hard to read the demands signs, but i reckon they reflect some of those issues.
i’d forgotten that an amnesty delegation had gone to ferguson in august and issued a report.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/on-the-streets-of-america-human-rights-abuses-in-ferguson
i am glad the folks on the ground let them know how poorly used they felt.
on edit: i don’t know much about amnesty, but it’s become clear over the years to me (especially since the odious R2P libya, that human rights watch (HRW) is an Empire and client states lackey organization, now with their eyes and bad pens focused on venezuela. lies, damned lies, and lovers of western capitalist states.
The demands were about workplace culture, management diversity, working in the US as they do elsewhere, and working in areas where activism is already happening. Long past time for these co-opted or complicit ngo’s to be called out. Maybe it will set a trend. Well, maybe not on the part of the “formerly known as left” but maybe so in the real grassroots.
Didn’t mean that to sound like I don’t think the calling out has happened before.
“Well, maybe not on the part of the “formerly known as left”. a worthy and pithy construct, marym. at least in ferguson, i’ve worried that many are far too close to: teach for america, the president’, and the ferguson commission. that said, ‘miz pikkety’ has had a bit more spunk than i’d imagined she’d have. i hope they’re radicalizing her.
yes, “working in areas where activism is already happening”, not coopting fr their own ends.
“left”; heh. i’ve been getting emails from a friend who still blogs at a place i was either banned from, or quit, depending on one’s definition. he was laughing about the fact that they’re having a gotv for hillary in a couple recent posts. the sites twitter account says: dagblog.com; #connecttheleft
lololol.
Hello wendyedavis,
I love stopping by to view the changing headliner photo, very nice. First on spring agenda in WI is actual D party members discussing taking the state D leadership away from the political consultant/owner class failing left voters at every turn.
Not sure the four candidates can get beyond their petty egos to *cooperate* in ousting the entrenched DNC leaning and big money faction that has failed to listen to anything or anyone hinting of leaning to the left. The DP of WI has even funded primary candidates to try to oust popular and populist sitting legislators.
Hoping they see some progress, but many fail to see that donating to LOTE party is only strengthening what they claim they want to change. I’m not shy about interjecting a few thoughts here and there in those discussions. ;^)
All the best, wd.
do i detect you meaning that there are some populist D’s running, nonquixote? and there is a buzz that this might be ‘the way’ forward? heh, srsly, an amigo, long lost to me, emailed yesterday saying that he was pretty well, except for (and in this order): scott walker, divorce after 34 years, bankruptcy, and the bnk taking their house. ouch x 2.
yes, in co, it was the DLC who would tank populist candidates who’d even won the caucuses. “let there be assholes!”, thank you so much.
i know you are not one bit shy about speaking your mind, heart, and morality, mi amigo.
ack, i only recently discovered that i *could* create banners with my own photos (or OP’s, i reckon). so much less boring, eh?
i wish all of you in WI a healthy and beneficial spring rising. the seeds have been planted, and now…it’s time they grow and bear fruit.
spring rising in the SF mission district:
Alex Nieto’s story:
http://justice4alexnieto.org/alex-story/
Sorry to hear the news about your *distant* acquaintance here in WI. I’m in no real spot to offer help, I fear, but share more in the mail if you have an idea. Hopefully any children are old enough to cope.
We are at the mercy of a clueless legislative wrecking crew whom Walker left with no governance plan, and a couple of R, “leaders,” jockeying for state dominance to replace him, and a set of “goals,” to hurt and break everything and everyone in this state.
Walker’s long gone, he’s on his potus tour on the public dime and announced over the weekend he now has a net worth of $2M. The state’s been in his rear view mirror all along.
These seeds of spring uprisings over social justice are sown in rocky ground and will need some constant weeding, feeding and tending right along.
US Supremes decided today, not to hear an appeal against the new WI Republicon voter ID bill, worst in the country, which will now come into effect after the Spring election in April. Absentee voting for April 7 already in progress.
Peace and Resolve, as down as this all sounds octogenarians testifying against Walker’s budget, hundreds, all wearing red shirts, appearing at a couple of public hearings, are signaling enough is enough, bastards.
even in your spiraling down, you wonder if you might be able to help my distant friend; you are a peach, nonquixote. i reckon he’ll be sorta okay since he still has a job, and works 70 hours a week, or did, tryin’ to catch up.
OMG on scotus declining to hear the egregious voter ID bill.. of course it punishes the rabble class, but the larger theory is they would likely vote D, so…it works for whom it’s intended to work.
ack, it’s an uphill rising for sure. and sometimes my spirits sink into my shoes in the knowledge that there are still so many obot/hillary Ds who just can’t see the truth of what’s afoot. perhaps reading at the accursed dagblog thi week was almost too instructional.
but because i can, and we need it: more water for the seeds, and for the unconscious stimulation brought by…the water of life.
If the last few elections in Wisconsin are an example the Dems couldn’t win anyway so this new ID requirement won’t change anything except the excuses the Dems use to cover their failures. It could provide some employment for activists to help the few people who can’t get to the MVD to obtain a photo id so the Repugs may get to sell this new law as a small jobs program funded by the DNC.
I do see the statistics that 300,000 people could be disenfranchised by this law as a typical Liberal bit of exaggeration and classist use of the idea that only the wonderful Dems can help these lazy, stupid and shiftless poor people to get their opportunity to vote, for Dems. Most of these people will get their ID by themselves or with the help if friends or family even if it is an inconvenience. .
We may even see people maintain their right to vote with proper ID and then join the majority of the electorate and refuse to support the system that makes their vote meaningless. That will certainly piss off a lot of Liberals and then we may hear what elite Liberals really think about minorities, the poor and especially young people who are rejecting our corrupt system en mass.
o, tell me more about the young uns who are rejecting the system, peter! i do see it in europe, for certain, but in the US? i need to believe.
heh, in a related theme, the sole *favor* obama/holder did for blacks was to ensure voter rights, but to be honest, i dunno what form that took. but lord love a duck, i’m waiting for the bumper sticker:
VOTE DEMOCRAT: KILLING YOU MORE SLOWLY THAN THE OTHER GUYS
watching hillary’s new charm offensive “financial inequality in cities; ack!) is high-larious, and watching peeps buy it: unbelievable. self-delusion is a sticky wicket. but then, a few of her alleged opponents are mouthing the same empty rhetoric.
oh, bugger. i saved this tweet from the most radical ferguson protestor and livestreamer (and muslim). i fear that he was *not* engaging in satire. head-banging.
Morning wd,
Forgot to say thanks for the music links, turned my focus to some productive tasks yesterday. Morning glories are a bit of a ways off here. ;)
WOW,
WI progressive/dems/indies are mostly chasing after and attempting to staunch the Walker-state instituted death by thousands of fiscal cuts.
Saving several extremely successful national model programs here, that were instituted to provide affordable senior, and long term disabled care in the state, now being handed over from local and individual control to national insurance profiteers, with no plan (they’ll work on replacing the highly successful programs over the next few years) as they leave the vulnerable hanging out to dry.
County, muni governments and school districts state-wide have pooled comprehensive insurance cooperatively, through a state program that is being handed over now to a different faction of private insurance profiteers. Many of a 1000 or so public entity coop members, will be SOL if all this passes in the R budget.
First step to be able to install state appointed private managers to take over failed public entities and sell of public assets to wealthy private interests. Shaming indifferent Repug leggies is unfortunately one of the only key tactics to engage with now to change the proposed state budget.
Good news, I think there is a serious push back about to explode and a wider understanding of not being able to do the same austerity things over and over that didn’t work and expect different outcomes.
Back out to the sun, some white moisture predicted Wed and Thurs.
as i may have said before: WI is detroit. it’s so hard to see the social safety net disappearing *nationally*, but it’s indeed worse in your state. no expanded medicaid, yes? pfffft. but i wrote about the medicaid clawback provisions, and our daughter’s married-into family just found out what that looks like. every stitch of money she had, or will have in the future via mineral royalties will go to…ta da! the big G. ($275,000 worth or so.)
and yes, on a state level r or d can matter greatly, but in the end, as peter lee quips: ‘it’s always jerks in suits running things’.
and yes, music helps greatly, at least most days. (i played the coup first thing this mornin’.) dagnabbit, wish we could get some wet stuff. water wars are comin’, and mr. wd expects that CA will make a call on CO water soon. uh-oh time.
if you have time, could you explain who the ‘1000 or so public entity coop members’ are?
Hi Wendy
The tweet from Masri highlights something I noticed about the young leaders of the Ferguson demonstrations from the beginning, there is not a radical bone in any of them. From the beginning they seemed to be nothing more than young Democrat operatives pushing the same old status quo reform agenda. There may have been some true radical thinkers but they were marginalized quickly when the Liberal power brokers moved in to take control of the uprising and steer it into a nonthreatening path.
We need to remember what happened to the Occupy Movement when the elite Liberals were unable to co-opt the movement into their political scheme, they called in the troops to destroy, with force, that radical movement.
I think that this generation is the first to be truly unneeded by the PTB except in a marginal way unlike our generation who were needed to grease the wheels of progress. It really isn’t that they are rejecting the system but the system is just ignoring and exploiting them and many of them see this clearly but have no viable public outlet to call for recognition. Demonstrations and mass movements seem to be circular exercises that either lead nowhere or are crushed so their resistance is limited to their personal circles of friends and forums. Just surviving is difficult for many so voting or activism are not priorities or even options that offer any real hope for change.
The more I think and write about this subject the more depressing things seem and we, all of us young and old in the belly of the Beast, may be relegated to the position of observers as other people in South America and possibly in southern Europe move toward real progress.
http://www.wisconsincountymutual.org/blog/governors-budget-proposes-closing-local-government-property-insurance-fund/
Under the budget proposal, no new coverage may be issued through the fund on or after July 1, 2015 and no coverage may be renewed after December 31, 2015. All money remaining in the fund after claims are paid will be distributed among local governments that were insured on July 1, 2015.
http://oci.wi.gov/lgpif.htm
Hope this helps. I know I am off the direct topic here, sorry for leading astray with the local news, but this is all part of what we are in the midst of uprising, *educating the public* about, as part of preventing further social disaster.
I’m offtopic as well, sorry, but this is about as antiwar as you can get – last night went into the wee hours for me (4a.m. finish) so you’ll forgive me for being a tad groggy with this post. All the kiwi matches have been stellar, but this one – well, you had to (almost) be there!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11422586
Oh, and the county, and immediately affected municipalities within the counties aren’t a bunch of radical youth from either political party, but state-wide media is still silent to a large extent on where this can potentially lead. Counties are still approachable elected officials that respond to public pressure because they are residents, too.
And the doubling down on public education, ah yes, let this nit-wit loose on the rest of the nation with a sitting Republican US Congress…NOT.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/03/12768/gov-walker-lift-cap-failing-voucher-schools-dont-tell-dpi#sthash.UaS5DKzb.cmfs
peter, thanks for that. my sense is that you’re right, at least to an extent, which is one of the reasons i’d emailed glen ford practically begging him to post some of the BAR pieces on different accounts (and i gave him six or seven), so that they might be educated about, and alerted to, analyses that differed from their own, which is largely experience-based radicalism.
malcolm x quotes, for instance, were tweeted hot and heavy, but then the police came down on bassem, mustafa hussain (who has disappeared), and a few others. troll tweeters have played great havoc with some, like livestreamer shortstack, and they often physically make their spying known.
but also, i believe you’re right in that the commissions, interviews with even indy media, and the overt presence of miz piketty teach for america has had an adverse effect on true radicalism. i will say that most of them very ably carved out their own space when dem operatives like sharpton tried to kettle them, and most railed loudly against dems who set up voting registration booths during civil actions.
well, clearly i don’t have my thoughts in order here, sorry. if there were one i’d have said was the most radical, i guess it would have been bassem, though. but then, he was tweeting comments by ted cruz, apparently a devotee of jesse helms, so…there’s that. and i guess i’m committing the cardinal sin of second-guessing them, and especially as a white person, it’s even worse.
no, no, nonquixote. local is where we live policy. the oci sounds a bit like what’s happening to the post office, although i only scanned the explanations on your first link. mismanagement, or death by claims, or both? well, thanks for the explanation. but education privatization is on the gallop, and college is increasingly unaffordable to all but the very, very comfortable class. what walker’s budget robbed from your state university was hideous. but then: remember when CA state colleges were….free? those were the days.
oh, juliania: you must be in cricket heaven! best heart to you, and…get some zzzzzzleep. ;-)
oh. and we’ve been mega-busy getting read for a visit from our daughter, hubbie, and three chirren. they’re due in tomorrow, late, and plenty to do before then.
but i do want to post a diary on the new asian infrastructure investment bank tomorrow, so that you may all edjumicate me about what i’m missing along the way. ;-)
it’s a potential major game-changer in an increasing bi- or multi-polar world, but what i don’t know about china,silk roads, russian history, and more…could fill whole libraries.
Family, may it be only joy.
Just had some long delayed contact with a part of mine. ;)
First returning pair of sand hill cranes today, one circling and squawking, calling loudly, on the thermals above the ridge until the mate appeared and they claimed the remains of the center of oat field to the south. *Official,* return of spring will however, be the return of the turkey vultures. LOLOLOL They know when warmer weather is here to stay.
you did, didn’t you? well, let’s put it this way: may the heaven outweigh the hell (given that five, not four are coming). (wiggles eyebrows)
ach, i dunno any sandhill crane songs, but here is ‘follow the heron’. we have great blues here most years; on the river, that is. so wee y’all would likely call it a crick up yonder. but you’d laugh to see great blues in one tree, in the next, dem old turkey buzzards. quite a site. they like the dead cottonwoods, of course. i remember in my o-HI-o days, the buzzards returning to hinkley was a noted almost-holiday. gotta reckon the area had little to celebrate, lol.
i’m makin’ some gingerbread people ‘n critters (some o’ that ‘grammy shit’) and oy, does the dough feel dry. give it some chill, see what pops, i guess.
peter, here’s an example of what i meant about being tamed. deray tweets that gilbert gets it, don marsh gets it (didn’t mention malveaux). but the aspen institute? wtf?
see…i’m at it again, dagnabbit. ;-)
oh, and remember if you can’t see whole tweets, hold down control, hit -, then +. annoying, but the only code the wordpess folks would give me to resize them smaller.
NQ,
The Sandhills winter here on the Rio Abajo and their leaving signals the beginning of Spring here. I do miss the few Whoopers that were part of the Sandhill flock a few decades ago, they didn’t mate and are gone.
OT
Peter Van Buren is taking heavy flack at the Mothership FDL for his claim that the US isn’t getting enough in return for returning stolen money to Iran and calling it paying off Iran.
I guess once a State Department hack always a State Department hack. I wonder if he is positioning himself for a cushy position in the new Clinton Regime.
surely you’ve read tom robbins’ ‘even cowgirls get the blues’, peter. ;-) whooping cranes feature prominently.
thank you for interpreting PVB’s post; i wasn’t sure what he was driving at. i confess that i’ve found it vexing that he never visits his diaries, but then…most of them seemed rather boring, to say the truth.
i do remember that jane hamsher posted something akin to: ‘firedoglake and peter van buren found one another! is he some sort of whistleblower? oh, never mind. i did look at his home site cross-post, and one of his sources was business insider, so…yellow journalism? not that i have anything against that per se. ;)
‘new clinton regime’; oy and veh.
Before I forget thanks for the great photo of the opium poppy you had up earlier.
PVB doesn’t handle criticism very well so he just does drive-byes now at FDL. He doesn’t seem to do very well at answering questions at his own site and his handle ” We Meant Well” just strikes me as too exceptional.
I nailed him on one of his early posts where he called the Benghazi CIA nest a consulate which a 23 year SD operative certainly knew was a lie. His reply was a feeble ramble about common terms of identification in the news where a simple oops I made a mistake would have been honest.
He wrote a book about waste and fraud in Iraq but I don’t know if you can really call a for-profit book whistleblowing and the facts of waste and fraud in Iraq were already widely reported. The SD did hold up his pension for a year so he did suffer from having to work with the little people at a Walmart or some such dungeon for a while.
Anyway he is on my growing list of ” Don’t trust this MOFO” he has an agenda.
it is a gorgeous plant, peter, although they haven’t reproduced much in the garden. the banner photos i set to switch out at random; wish i’d known earlier that i can create my own. or maybe it’s a new feature, while wordpress is yanking other indispensable things. pffffft.
wow, yes, all one needed to see were the pallets of bales of $100 bills being loaded onto planes bound for iraq, eh? (only slightly kidding) egad, the lies about libya won’t be leaving the scene soon; dems won’t have it, by gum!. but good on you for challenging it.
i advised readers on his thread that he was responding to some comments, but i never checked whether some of his detractors/interlocutors went over there.
Wendy;
You might want to read the thought provoking post at Al Jazeera, ISIL’s Feminine Mystique about the Al-Khansaa Brigade. The Muslim women fighters pictured don’t look docile or submissive to me they look downright dangerous.
i fetched the link, and put it on my working word doc for a later read; thank. i’m jammed getting ready for our daughter and family’s arrival tonight, plus trying to finish up a post on the aiid bank to post…(arrgh)…as soon as i can.
ha: the title is betty friedan’s, eh? strange photo, though.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/isils-feminine-mystique.html
Nonquixote
damn, you live in Wisconsin? Ya fuckin’ cheesehead? My wife is from there. We should meet some time. I live right next door in Minneapolis, Minnesota-ah doncha know? If you want, let me know. As for the Dumbocraps they are even more craven here in Minnesota although what they did to the potential of the Wisconsin occupation last year, squelching a possible, building GENERAL STRIKE will be always unforgivable.
Ummmmm Wendye Davis darling. Did I see that right? have YOU been banned or otherwise disappeared from a certain site? REALLY? Dear Gawd that place has sunk to a new and more openly and cravenly operating with the “progressive” Veal Pen brigade is it is true. Pretty much ripping off their “open progressive” mask so to speak.
Sigh. Welcome to the world of the progressive disappeared. I post now at TruthDig and haven’t been banned yet.
Oh and of course, as always the best regards to you and Mr Wendye Davis. Have a wee thought and prayer for the long suffering Mrs Michael Cavlan. LOL
golly gee-whillikers, michael cavlan. nope, not banned, it’s just that there *isn’t* any my.fdl, and may or may not be in the future, depending on..something or other technichal. meanwhile, here we are, waiting for godot…or not. ;)
i will indeed send some good vibes of commiseration to the good miz. cavlan. ah, hell; i’ll send you some good thoughts, too. and i won’t even charge ya my usual $1.99 for ’em.
LOL
Well thank you. Good thoughts and vibes are always appreciated.
MJC,
My boots are on the ice along the west edge of the big pond, so no short trip to MN. Close to a seven hour poke last time I ventured there.
Spring uprisings are on hold as we try to “encourage,” the majority legislators to feeling some actual shame for any part of the Walker budget they claim to support.
Then one gets a read this interview with Paul Craig Roberts and realizes the long road not even imagined by most of the vocal youth or even a few of my very own peers.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/25/an-interview-with-paul-craig-roberts-2/
Mother Nature is forcing US to recant:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/25/long-live-glen-canyon/
We must love one Gaianother or die.
michael cavlan: my vibes R cheap at twice the price. ;-)
nonquixote: oy, the saker and pcr!
bruce: yes, devastation is at hand. since mr. wd is on our local water conservancy (read dammed reservoir) board, we’ve been reading a lot about the western water frights, and potential solutions; all are of course relatively short-term. but as to the percentages of capacity in meade and powell, i was wondering aloud how they measure that now…given that both puddles have been massively silting up, are they even making accurate measurements?
this Wapo piece discusses not only the illegality of saving rain water in CO, but gets into the discussion of ag/rural v. city water use, and it is a huge concern. a least in CO, a lot of western slope water is piped to the megalopolis of front range cities.