When a teachers’ strike started to look like a realistic possibility earlier this spring, CPS Chief Communications Officer Becky Carroll warned the readers of Catalyst, “Any talk of a strike is the wrong message to send our schools, students and taxpayers.” For her, and the rest of the privatization evangelists at CPS, the “right” message is simple—shut up and do what you’re told.
Of course, Carroll, who makes $165,000 per year, isn’t paid that kind of money to tell the truth. Luckily for us, neither Chicago teachers nor the larger education community are giving much credence to CPS talking points.
The corporate education “reformers” have been experimenting on Chicago’s most underserved students and schools for more than two decades, trying any quick-fix makeovers so long as such schemes keep the public out of the discussion on how best to educate our city’s children. The so-called innovations taking place in charter and turnaround schools are making chaos of students’ formative years and relegating the art of teaching to rote instruction. Read the rest of this entry →
23 July 2012 – Statement from Jeremy Hammond, alleged Anonymous hacker – original post here
Thanks for everybody coming out in support! It is so good to know folks on the street got my back. Special thanks to those who have been sending books and letters, and to my amazing lawyers.
I remember maybe a few months before I was locked up I went to a few noise demonstrations a the federal jail MCC Chicago in support of all those locked up there. Prisoners moved in front of the windows, turned the lights on and off, and dropped playing cards through the cracks in the windows. I had no idea I would soon be in that same jail facing multiple trumped up computer hacking “conspiracies.” Read the rest of this entry →
The Cruz family home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, went into foreclosure in 2011 when PNC failed to withdraw an online mortgage payment and then demanded two months’ payment as punishment. Unable to pay more than the current month’s installment, the family home fell into foreclosure.
Despite acknowledging that the Cruz’s foreclosure was due to a bank error and repeated claims that they are working “behind the scenes” to get the Cruz family back in their home, PNC Bank has refused to accept the documents necessary for the loan to be modified. So Alejandra and David Cruz, along with several supporters, are going hand-deliver the documents to PNC’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA!
The community, as a whole, has rallied to help the Cruz family, and many other families defend their homes from unethical and often illegal bank foreclosures. [see videos below of these events, including one featuring musician Brother Ali talking about these issues and why this struggle is so important] – roguemedia
The Cruz family stopped today at the regional headquarters of Freddie Mac, the bailed-out secondary market lender that has posted guards and boarded up the doors and windows with reinforced steel to keep the Cruz family and supporters out of their home. After this, they marched, with supporters to a nearby PNC branch, where they refused to allow them to go inside and present loan modification documents.
Since April 30, Occupy Homes MN has been working with the Cruz family, whose home went into foreclosure when PNC Bank mishandled an online payment. Although PNC executives have acknowledged their error and repeatedly told Cruz supporters that they are working on a solution, their actions have shown the opposite. They have refused to work with the family, instead working with Freddie Mac and the city of Minneapolis to launch a series of costly police raids against home, resulting in 23 arrests in less than a week. Despite ongoing protests, PNC still thinks we’ll go away if they ignore us long enough. It’s time to show them otherwise: on June 19, Alejandra and David Cruz will be travelling along with a team of supporters to PNC’s Pittsburgh headquarters to hand-deliver their modification documents and demand a meeting with CEO Jim Rohr! Occupy Homes MN is calling for a national day of action on PNC to coincide with the Cruz’s arrival on Thursday, June 21. see videos below
EU bankfail as everyone relishes Spain’s ‘successful auction’ – American bankfail continues as homeless spirals, inflation & money velocity drift
On the MN front, well the Occupy movement in Minneapolis really flushed out a lot of authoritarian over-reactions in the last couple weeks, starting with a haphazard police action slapping a KSTP photographer, arresting a dozen occupiers including an indy videographer (which the tut tutters ignore, etc). A meeting with the mayor and police chief was achieved. Videos & stills from the street incident by various folks including myself and roguemedia.org at youtube.com/hongpong & quickly circulated as far as Iran’s state news service PressTV lol.
A few days later, Minneapolis City Council President Barb Johnson tried to sneak an unlawful resolution without any public notice, which would have instantiated shutting down many inalienable rights between midnight and 6 AM on Nicollet Mall and Peavey/Greenway/Riverside plazas etc., including my right to collect stories and media as a journalist, a proselytizer’s right to preach the Gospel, a protesters right to protest, a homeless person’s right to exist, etc., in the name of the hellish blandness demanded by corporate psychopaths who want peace & quiet and these damn kids off their publicly owned lawns. The Council kicked it to committee 9-4 after the mayor lobbied for the corrupt resolution.
For the moment, anyhow, this pushed Johnson from the perceived ‘center’ to the ‘right’ of the DFL-dominated city political continuum. With an embarrassing defeat for the mayor, with the high stakes Vikings Stadium deal to rail thru without a vote in Minneapolis on the rocks at the Capitol, and Barb’s greasy Peavey Plaza plan whacked in at least one committee, it seems the wheels of shadiness have trouble turning when a little sand gets in the gears. (the next hearing is May 2nd or 3rd, this would be a public hearing for the public safety committee vote, don’t have info on hand. see facebook.com/occupymn or occupyminneapolis.mn )
According to one source, Mayor Rybak & Johnson’s defeat last Friday was enough to spur one pol to discuss finally taking on the city machine — the notion is that this new shakeup could finally crack open some political space in Minneapolis for an alternative after years upon years of stasis and acquiescence to top-down control (on behalf of the big banks and police union types in particular).
If nothing else then, it shows that the Founding Feathers insisted upon enough cracks in the machine to get the sand into. They never really could guarantee that the machine would work, but it seems like the saving grace for the last week was basically our dwindling freedom to throw sand in the machine. Good times. Even in Big Stone County people are standing up against massive mining projects.
OAKLAND, California (Reuters) – A man shot and wounded by an Oakland police officer last weekend was a cousin of Oscar Grant, whose shooting death by a Bay Area transit officer sparked violent demonstrations in 2010, his attorney said on Wednesday.
The officer shot Tony Jones, 24, in the back as he fled from a police car at about 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, according to Jones’ attorney, Waukeen McCoy.
“He made a mistake running, but that didn’t give them the right to shoot him in the back,” McCoy said. Jones is the son of Oscar Grant’s aunt, he added.
Police in Oakland have a history of brutal repression and wrongdoing, which has incited the ire of local activists [EPA]
Oakland, CA – The streets of Oakland, a California city of about 400,000, became a battle ground again on Saturday, as police showed excessive force in their response to Occupy Oakland demonstrations. Around 400 protesters were arrested, and many more, including the elderly, children, and some unwitting passersby, were tear-gassed and injured during the course of the first day of Occupy Oakland’s Move-In Weekend and Rise Up Festival.
January 28th was a day blackened by the dark armor of riot police clear across the North American continent. In Oakland, the efforts of Occupy protesters to build a community center in a long abandoned convention hall were blocked by brutal repression at the hands of law enforcement. Over three hundred people were reported arrested by the Oakland Police Department, after they were rounded up from their peaceful protest without warning, kettled into a square, tear gased, shot with rubber bullets and bean bags, beaten with batons, and then systematically imprisioned one by one. Among them were several members of the Occupy Portland Media Committee, who had traveled to the city in order to help with media coverage for their re-occupation. This photo below, shows the aftermath once the police had come in and done their work. American citizens sit, bound on their knees, which guarded by by a black-clad, invading army.
When a teachers’ strike started to look like a realistic possibility earlier this spring, CPS Chief Communications Officer Becky Carroll warned the readers of Catalyst, “Any talk of a strike is the wrong message to send our schools, students and taxpayers.” For her, and the rest of the privatization evangelists at CPS, the “right” message is simple—shut up and do what you’re told.
