G20 in Toronto:Police abuses trigger huge street battles

On the first day of the G20 protests, police went out o their way to keep peaceful protesters-especially First Nations and immigrant supporters-from embarassing the government and capitalists. That night, there were three police raids on activist homes. After police tried and failed to impose bag searches on the main march, some people had had enough. With the summit zone a militarized fortress, anticapitalists faded to the back of the march, broke off-and turned their fury on both the cops and the rich businessmen who invited the G20 in the first place.

This is the second time this has happened at the G20. The G20 in Pittsburgh was peaceful until cops opened fire with rubber bullets and an LRAD. After that, the gloves came off, the rocks began to fly, and capitalist glass began to shatter.

With cop cars in flames, bank and chain store windows smashed, a message has been sent to the wealthy in every city on Earth: Don’t invite the “Wall Street uber Main Street” summits to town, because it will by your ass that gets kicked. See you in October at the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington DC!

HLS protest draws low-level police harassment

On June 23, protesters opposing three DC HLS customers in 701 Pennsylvania Ave NW in DC Ave ran into harassment from a cop demanding that everyone keep walking in a circle.

Guess Bayer, one of three HLS customer Big Pharmas inside 701 Penn, didn’t like being called out in the last protest for their past as part of I.G Farben, nor for their continuing role as a customer of puppy-killing Huntingdon Life Sciences. No doubt Novartis and Astra-Zenica are sick of being called out for their puppy-killing ways as well, as is Sanofi-Aventis next door at 801 Penn.

Another BP gas station Protest in DC

On the 19th of June, protesters showed up outside the BP at 13th and N sts in DC, protesting BP’s mammoth oil spill in the Gulf.

WSQT Radio coverage

This protest is not against any one franchise of BP.This protest is against BP’s corporation.
This station can easily pick up another franchise after BP goes bankrupt, but for BP to go bankrupt, people need to remember: Don’t buy gas at BP!

Meanwhile, WTOP News was reporting that BP’s CEO TOny Hayward was off to the yacht races off Britain’s Isle of Wight, while oil workers frantically try to clean up his mess in the Gulf of Mexico and fishermen are out of work. Meanwhile, Tony is out on some other water having the grandest time…

June 16: HLS protesters call out Bayer for IG Farben past

Bayer, Novartis and Astra-Zenica are all customers of puppy-killing Huntingdon Life Sciences, a contract animal testing laboratory in New Jersey. On the 16th of June, all three received another round of protests at their combined DC lobbying headquarters at 701 Penn Ave NW. One protester, who happens to be Jewish, call out Bayer for their past as part of IG Farben-the maker of Zyklon B.

Bayer was one of 6 corporations which were merged to form I.G. Farben. The other founding members were BASF, Hoechst, Agfa,Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fab .

In addition, a Nazi war criminal named Fritz ter Meer became chairman of Bayer in 1956! He had just been released from 7 years in prison-for experimenting on humans at Auschwitz! Hew even went so far as to state publicly that experiments on prisoners at IG Farben did no harm because the prisoners would be killed anyway!

Revealing this sort of dirty laundry against Bayer has worked before-it’s how right-wing fundies kept Bayer from selling RU-486 in Europe, forcing the German government to produce and sell it instead. If Bayeer is this afraid of their Nazi past, this should also be enough to force them to DUMP HLS. According to animal rights protesters, the corporate attitides at Bayer have changed little since Fritz’s days at Auschwitz-dumping HLS could prove to the contrary.

One security guard seemed to take an unusual interest in videotaping protesters.

Pride Parade marches while city closes another Gay club

On June 12, the “Capitol Pride” (GLBT pride) parade marched through what once was DC’s traditional Gay neighborhood centered around Dupont Circle. That same weekend, it was reported in the Washington Blade that the DCBRA has temporarily ordered Zigfields/Secrets closed!

How Dare Mary Cheh show up at Pride, given that her support for anti-First Amendment legislation aimed at animal rights protesters is also a threat to clubs like Zigfields/Secrets?

Zigfields/Secrets is the only one of the strip clubs displaced by the Nationals stadium to be allowed to repoen, now they are being kept under a microscope by officials who seek to shut them down again.

Under these circumstances, it was good to see Councilmember Gray, who is challenging Mayor Fenty for Mayor, show up at the parade. After all, Fenty has just kept on closing down traditional GLBT institutions even after the baseball stadium was completed. First the stadium area, then then “men’s parties,” now Zigfields/Secrets. Hopefully Ziggy’s will survive this round of harassment, but if the closures of African-American clubs by Fenty, Graham, and their regulatory agencies are any precedent, once a club is in their gunsights, it’s days are numbered.

As usual, there were too many corporate themes and floats in the Parades, but there were also contingents supporting the traditional values of the GLBT community, and standing against assimilation.

While some in the parade are suit-and-tie businessmen who cheer the replacement of almost all traditional GLBT institutions by marriage, that wasn’t who everyone seemed to be cheering for as contingents of the parade passed through dense crowds reminescent of the day-long takeovers of P st that marked pride parades during the 1980′s.

Contingents like the Radical Faeries and other pro-sex, anti-assimilation groups got raucous cheers from huge crowds lining both sides of the parade route.

Given that the immense crowd of spectators must include a LOT of registered voters, perhaps Fenty ought the consider the reality that supporting marriage can never counterweight closing GLBT clubs in the minds of those who prefer to stay single.

Related

Protest at BP gas station

On the 12th of June, protesters showed up at the BP gas station at 14th and Euclid Streets NW. New logos were added to the gas pumps showing a skull and crossbones inside BP’s hypocritical “Green Sun” logo.

While standing in front of the station, protesters chanted “arrest BP,” a reference to demand for criminal prosecution of BP executives whose cost and corner-cutting caused the ever-growing Gulf oil spill. Experts now say we will eventually see tarballs in the Chesapeake Bay, maybe even on the tidal Potomac River!

June 12 was a national day of action against BP gas stations and against oil-spewing BP, and this was not the only protest at a BP station even in the DC area. I saw FOX news coverage of a BP gas station protest, but did not see any TV news cameras or tripods at the scene-my camera was the only one shown in the open.

The manager of the station threatened to sue protesters, forgetting that collecting on any judgement would be like trying to draw blood from a turnip. She also claimed that a boycott of the station would have no effect on BP due to how gad is distributed.

In reality, however, every gallon of gas sold by BP stations has to be replaced by BP, and BP then gets almost all the money customers pay for the gas. It matters not that the gas from all venders mixes in that Virgina tank farm, etc, because what is drawn from it to feed BP stations is ultimately replaced by (and thus SOLD by) BP.

Reportback from June 10 DC HLS protests

On the 10th of June, 4 DC offices of Big Pharmas that are customers of puppy-killing Huntingdon Life Sciences got yet another round of protests. Novartis and Astra-Zenica in 700 Penn Ave NW, Sanofi-Aventis in 800 Penn Ave, and Bristol-Myers Squibb at 655 15th st all got noisy early-morning protests, with no opposition from police.

The aerial view behind the news speaker is HLS’s New Jersey facility…

Bottom photo: A security guard tried to disperse protesters as though they were honeybees!

More Gaza protests in DC

On the 4th of June, as the next Gaza Relief ship Rachael Corrie was reported to be one day out from the Gaza coast, protesters gathered at both the White House and at the Embassy of Isra-Hell.

Both protests denounced Isra-Hell’s murderous piracy at sea against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla-and warned against any repeat of the violence against the crew and passengers of the Rachael Corrie as she approached the beseiged Gaza Strip.

BP gets DC office building stormed over spreading oil spill

At lunchtime on the 4th of June, protesters stormed the doors of BP’s corporate office building at 1101 NY Ave.

After a rally outside featuring a giant oil drum, people crossed the street and pushed through the outer doors of the lobby, intending to make a “citizen’s arrest” of BP executives for the oil spill off the Gulf Coast. The spill was described by Rev Yearwood (who is from Louisiana) as “worse than Katrina” for African-American and Native-American fishermen on the Gulf Coast, as it will probably result in a possible permanent end to their way of life.


There was CONSIDERABLE mainstream press interest in this event-usually when I go into a building with protesters, I am the ONLY reporter present-not this time! Let’s see if any of that footage the big cameras shot ever comes out on TV…

The attempt to take BP executives into custody for their crimes was not a success, though someone brought old-school striped jail jumpsuits for them. perhaps some better luck with Gitmo(and DC Jail)-orange jumpsuits and a Black Bloc to arrange delivery next time? Or how about none of us at all-just a bunch of pissed-off fisherman, their boats docked on the Potomac River, seeking to take these BP bastards out on a cruise?

Two chain themselves to White House fence over oil and murder in Peru

On the first of June, as President Obama met with Peruvian President Alan Garcia, two women chained themselves to the White House fence, one covered in what appeared to be OIL, calling out Peruvian President Alan Garcia for murdering indigenous people to seize their land for oil exploration.

Across the street, protesters gathered with the same message-no resource extraction without indigenous consent!

As of last year, at least 84 people had died defending their lands against oil exploration after Peru changed their constitution in the interests of “free trade” agreements. Laws were passed stripping indigenous tribes of their land so greedy corporations like the polluting oil industry could take the land and strip it bare. Indigenous people are giving their lives to resist this outrage any way they can.

A large crowd of bystanders joined the chants of “Amazon Forest not for sale!” Wonder if, with oil as the issue here, if people had BP on their mind? BP also kills people(ask anyone who was on the Deepwater Horizen) and may put every fisherman on the Gulf Coast out of business forever.