48,000 academic workers and members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 4811 have authorized a #strike against the brutal #police crackdown on the #student Palestine #encampment at #UCLA, filing #UnfairLaborPractices charges against the UC system, after many graduate student workers in the union were subjected to violent police attacks at their place of work.
#Albuquerque Is Throwing Out the Belongings of #Homeless People, Violating City Policy
The city has violated a court order and its own policies by discarding the personal property of thousands of homeless people, who have lost medications, birth certificates, IDs, treasured family photos and the ashes of loved ones.
A Gaza solidarity demonstrator gives a flower to police officers deployed to the University of California, Irvine [UC Irvine] campus on May 15, 2024 [Mike Blake/Reuters]
In a new investigative report, AP finds: "In hundreds of deaths where [U.S.] police used force meant to stop someone without killing them, officers violated well-known guidelines for safely restraining and subduing people — not simply once or twice, but multiple times."
"For its investigation, AP catalogued 1,036 deaths over a decade’s time after officers had used force not involving their guns. In about half, medical officials ruled that law enforcement caused or contributed to the deaths, but they usually didn’t mention whether policing best practices were followed."
On July 22, 1916, someone set off a bomb during the pro-war “Preparedness Day” parade in San Francisco. As a result, 10 people died and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on the false testimony of Martin Swanson, a detective with a long history of interfering in San Francisco strikes. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. Swanson maintained constant surveillance and harassment of Mooney and Warren Billings, as well as Alexander Berkman & Emma Goldman. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman. Billings and Mooney ultimately served 23 years in prison for a crime they had not committed. Governor Edmund G. Brown pardoned them in 1961.
Billings and Mooney were both anarchists, and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). As a young man in San Francisco, Tom Mooney published The Revolt, a socialist newspaper. He was tried and acquitted three times for transporting explosives during the Pacific Gas & Electric strike in 1913. Consequently, the cops already believed he was a bomber, prior to the Preparedness Day parade.
In 1937, Mooney filed a writ of habeas corpus, providing evidence that his conviction was based on perjured testimony and evidence tampering. Among this evidence was a photograph of him in front of a large, ornate clock, on Market Street, clearly showing the time of the bombing and that he could not have been at the bombing site when it occurred. He was finally released in 1939. Upon his release, he marched in a huge parade down Market Street. Cops and leaders of the mainstream unions were all forbidden from participating. An honor guard of longshoremen accompanied him carrying their hooks. His case helped establish that convictions based on false evidence violate people’s right to due process.
The Alibi Clock was later moved to downtown Vallejo, twenty-five miles to the northeast of San Francisco. A bookstore in Vallejo is named after this clock. On May 11, 2024, I did a reading there from my working-class historical novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, during the Book Release Party for Roberta Tracy’s, Zig Zag Woman, which takes place at the time of the Los Angeles Times bombing, in 1910, when two other labor leaders, the McNamara brothers, were framed.
In 1931, while Mooney and Billings were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, “By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening… Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly.”
During the Spanish war against fascism (AKA the Spanish Civil War), many Americans volunteered to join the antifascist cause as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades. One of the battalions was named the Tom Mooney Machine-Gun Company. It was led by Oliver Law, a communist, and the first black man known to have commanded white U.S. troops.
Police officers face off with pro-Palestinian students after destroying part of the encampment barricade at the campus of the University of California. The police cleared UCLA’s student encampment in a late-night operation, and arrested at least 200 pro-Palestine demonstrators
Police officers remove a pro-Palestinian protester outside the University of Amsterdam during a protest in #Amsterdam, Netherlands. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Police on UMass Amherst campus last night, prior to storming the students' peaceful demonstration. In the background is the WEB DuBois library. Oh the irony. Photo by my nephew, prior to his arrest. #UMass#FreePalestine#Police
A debate about the differences of #antiZionism & #antiSemitism isn't possible @freieuniversitaet . Some might say that's corrupted by design, but I'd call it a classic conflict of interest.
However, #FUBerlin president prof. Ziegler published today: “This kind of protest is not dialogue oriented. An occupation of university property is not acceptable. We welcome academic debate and dialogue – but not in this form,”
Well #Trillanes isn't really wrong. #Duterte and his gang of #drugwar criminals are perhaps the most dangerous #fifthcolumn the #Philippines has faced yet since #WW2. Worse than the Japanese #fifthcolumnists in #Davao (which funnily enough is the same territory the Duterte clan has firm control of, like a fiefdom). But instead of working for the Japanese invaders they're working for the #Chinese communists this time.
The main collaborators being officials within #PNP leadership isn't really surprising either, because Duterte pampered the #police so hard (for example promising not to hold them accountable for clear-cut abuses of power in the drug war) during his 6-year rule.
It seems like #Marcos' strengthening of the alliance with the #US has convinced the #AFP not to defect to the Dutertes though. The Philippine #military is rabidly pro-American and Duterte had a hard time trying to balance having a pro-#China policy and appeasing the soldiers. :seija_coffee:
“Following President #Biden’s green light last week for #police assaults on peaceful campus protests against the US/Israeli #genocide in #Gaza, both the scale of police violence and the fever chart of arrests continue to rise.
And as students in their thousands courageously defy the police state crackdown … the fascistic rhetoric and bald-face lies from #Democrats and #Republicans alike grow increasingly shrill and sinister”
History professor Steve Tamari is out of the hospital after #police seriously injured him at the Washington University student #protest. According to his wife, he will need surgery on his hand, and he is in pain from nine broken ribs. #Missouri#freepalestine
L’épouse de l’ancien président français est auditionnée, jeudi 2 mai, dans le cadre de l’enquête sur l’opération «Sauver Sarko», une manipulation médiatique et judiciaire menée en marge de l’affaire des financements libyens.