An unprecedented wave of Walmart protests grows with strikes in five states! Austin activists joined the call to protest against Walmart! The key word to describe the wave of worker walkouts and protests against Walmart in recent weeks: unprecedented. As Walmart warehouse strikers in Illinois go back to work with full back pay, other workers were striking. Josh Eidelson captures just how unprecedented this is: For the second time in five days and also the second time in Walmart's five decades, workers at multiple US Walmart stores are on strike.
Austin, TX (10/6/12) Occupy Austin members say they wanted to help the homeless--at least that was their mission before police broke up a Saturday protest and arrested three Occupiers. To commemorate the one year anniversary of the local Occupy movement Saturday, protestors planned to march from the new Highland Mall ACC Campus to an abandoned Home Depot warehouse. It was at that location they planned to set up a temporary homeless shelter appropriately named "Tent City."
Activist Josh Pineda caught on camera when police confronted the Occupy members at the protest. "I was out there trying to film the police to make sure they werenapos;t beating anybody or wrongfully arresting anybody," Pineda, a member of police watch dog group the Peaceful Streets Project, said. Instead, Pineda and another protestor were arrested. Police say they were trespassing. Before he was placed in cuffs, Josh can be seen backing away from officers. He also can be heard yelling questions at the other man getting arrested. "I was trying to get Luke Smithapos;s information,? Pineda said. ?They had grabbed him and I was trying to ask him what was going on. That was when I stumbled and they snatched me." Outspoken activist Kit O?Connell says homeless services around town fall short for those who need a roof over their head. "We want them to take some of these empty properties, abandoned properties, unused spaces and allow people to camp there to stay there," he said. In the meantime, the idealists want the government to know jail time will not stop their mission. "If they think any of these actions are going to deter us, they are dead wrong. If anything it is going to further amplify us," Pineda said. The three Occupiers arrested Saturday are out of jail, but are charged with criminal trespassing. The group says they expect the charges to be thrown out.
Videography by Jeff Zavala and Meg Seidel. Video produced and edited by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix production. http://zgraphix.org
Members and community supporters of The Workers Defense Project reflect on 10 years of creating a more dignified Austin for working people, and honor the women who let us along the way. Video produced by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix production. http://zgraphix.org
Austin, TX 10/1/12 Two arrests follow a productive day of expressing dissent against many issues including homelessness, disparity of wealth, police brutality and corruption to name a few. Austin occupiers and chalkupiers, gathered to exercise their 1st amendment rights but were met by APD officers who believed it was their right to squelch dissent. It has been determined by several federal courts that chalk is a legitimate way to express grievances to the government and is protected free speech.
We must not remain silent! We have the right to chalk and the right to hold our local police accountable for their actions.
Filmed on the Canon XF 100 using the Merlin 2 Steadicam Stabilizer. Video produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix production. http://zgraphix.org
Gar Alperovitz, a leading scholar and activist in the building of a new economy, speaks on "Democratizing the Emerging Economy.
Cooperatives, social enterprises, public banks and other new structures provide a new vision for the next economy. Alperovitz, the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, will explain how this work, especially the various forms of cooperative ownership, is helping to lay the groundwork for important new directions in the coming era that will see major political and economic changes.
Robert King give a message of solidarity and resistance in support of Talha Ahsan. This video was shown at the "Extradite Me, I'm British" event.
Extradite Me, I'm British was an evening of film, prison poetry, talks, drama, comedy, nasheeds around the notorious 2003 US-UK extradition treaty currently affecting British citizens Talha Ahsan, Babar Ahmad, Richard O'Dwyer and Gary Mckinnon.
The programme explores questions at the at the heart of British identity: what it means to be a British citizen , the erosion of civil liberties, human rights in a post-9/11 era, British Sovereignty and its big brother relations with America. The event brings together many of the guests of the UK-wide 14 date film, poetry and speakers tour in a single night. The treaty was creation of Blair-Bush partnership that allows British citizens to be spirited away to the US — and its out-of-control judicial system — without the US having to provide any evidence, even if the alleged crimes took place in the UK, and even if the alleged crimes are not crimes in the UK. The event takes its name from a T-shirt by the Arts Against Extraditions collective.
More than 60,000 thousand people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico in the last few years. 10,000 people have been disappeared and over 160,000 displaced. Global Exchange and Mexico's Movement for Peace with Justice and DIgnity (MPJD) led by Javier Sicilia have made "End the Drug War- No more Violence" campaign a priority in 2012. Starting in August, a high profile caravan will cross the US starting in San Diego/Los Angeles, heading east along the US-Mexico border and then up to Chicago, New York and DC.
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