Occupy DC marches through streets, blocks traffic to retaliate for police attack on Information tent

On the 29th of March, US Park Police invaded Occupy DC’s McPherson Square campsite, removed the Informaton tent and everything inside, and violently arrested a woman who tried to reclaim her property from it.

The small-scale raid was at noon, while some of the Occupiers and the press were busy with the protest at ALEC’s 1101 Vermont Ave headquarters over “Stand Your Ground” laws cited in the Trayvon Martin murder. Almost exactly two hours after the raid, a new Info tent was set up and back in full scale operation.

Occupiers were extremely angry with the Park Police, to the point that a proposal to immediately retaliate with a blockade of K st came within a whisker of being adopted-this time around. Any further aggression of this sort could well carry consequences of the sort the police or their corporate masters won’t like!

For the second time in less than a week, the Park Police falsely told Occupiers that posession of ANY personal property at McPherson Square was somehow illegal. Police are legally permitted to lie to the public, like when Park Police threatened to arrest Occupiers under a vagrancy law the courts overturned in 1969 if they don’t carry ID.

Video-recorded Ustream video of the police attack Begins with the Civil Rights rally against ALEC from which the Livestreamer was summoned by an emergency messsage

At 7PM on the 29th of March, Occupy DC swarmed out of McPherson Square and into K street. Marching against traffic one one way streets whenever possible, protesters snaked to strategic intersection after strategic intersection, blocking each one with a circular march for as long as possible.

Video of march with interview to witness to attack and clip from earlier ALEC protest

The march culminated with a blockade of both rings of Dupont Circle, and after marching back down Conn Ave, the marched passed ALEC, the second time protesters had been there on the 29th of March. This was followed by a two-element blockade of Logan Circle, the highlight of which was that a bus was permitted to pass, but a gasoline tanker was resolutely blocked by anti fossil fuel activists.

The intersection blockades, one after another in rapid sequence, cause unpredictable and spreading traffic jams for about an hour and a half. Motorists and bystanders were told “this traffic jam brought to you by Sgt Reed of the US Park Police!

When the march returned to McPherson Square after almost two hours in the streets, the Park Police were nowhere to be found. Only MPD cruisers, none from the US Park Police, could be seen parked anywhere near McPhseron Square.

Some of the marchers carried fishing poles or improvised fishing poles with small donuts or imitations of donuts dangling from the line, symbolizing a barbed hook within for any cop stupid enough to take the bait. The Park cop who made all the recent trouble is named Sgt Reed, and with the consequences the March 29 raid stirred up, his career may not be well and truly hooked.

New Black Panther Party announces $10K bounty on Zimmerman at Dept of Justice rally

On the 26th of March, activists from a number of groups gathered outside US Attorney General Eric Holder’s office, where 500,000 signed petitions were delivered demanding prosecution of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Video of New Black Panther Party speaker announcing bounty

During the rally, a speaker from the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense announced that the Party would pay $10,000 to anyone who captured or caused the arrest of George Zimmerman.

Since the police will not arrest George Zimmerman for murder, the New Black Panthers have decided the Black community will have to take care of business and are putting up the money for the bounty.

The bounty is being increased as donations pour in, and wanted posters showing the current $10,000 bounty were on display

Reportback from Justice for Trayvon rally on the Wilson Building steps

Thousands of people gathered on Freedom Plaza, Penn Ave, and hundreds on the very steps of the Wilson Building to protest the racist murder of Trayvon Martin on the 24th of March.

Video:Speaker calls for boycotting ALEC corporations, another says Zimmerman “would have shot Mickey Mouse”

One speaker said the crowd looked like a big of Skittles for the diversity of people present.It was a bag of Skittles Trayvon had in his hand when he was murdered.

One speaker at the rally called for a boycott of Wal-Mart and other corporations finding ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which wrote Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. That law is being cited by Zimmerman, a self-appointed and unregistered “neighborhood Watch” as his defense. Ironically, a literal reading of the law by a non racially bised court would find that Trayvon would under it have been entitled to stand his ground, draw a gun, and blow Zimmerman’s head off if he continued his attack. Of course, as another speaker pointed out, if Trayvon had responded to the great threat Zimmeriam posed with a gun of his own, he would be sitting in jail awaiting trial for murder!

When the rally was over, the dispersing crowd was large enough to create very heavy pedestrian traffic on all nearby sidewalks, as dense as the Beltway would be with cars on an afternoon rush hour.

OurDC besieges PEPCO, demanding 50% rate cut an moratorium on cutoffs

On the 21st of March, OurDC marched on PEPCO’s 9th st headquarters and payment center. Simultanious actions were scheduled at three other PEPCO payment centers, including Rockville and SE DC. The main message of the march was “PIG” meaning “Pepco is Greedy.”

Video of the PEPCO protest

Demands of the protest were a 50% rate cut, a moratorium on electricity cutoffs, that PEPCO pay their taxes instead of evading them, and that PEPCO stop lobbying to block pro-consumer legislation and appointments to regulatory agencies,

Pepco was called out for spending more lobbying than on taxes after a profit in 2010 of $624 million dollars. PEPCO topped one study’s chart for paying the highest negative tax rate at 57% (taxes – subsidies) of any corporation in the DC area ladt year. Just their CEO was paid $6M in compensation, now PEPCO wants a $42M rate hike?

OneDC is furious with this, and last time they went to PEPCO they stormed tthe building and ultimately managed to force PEPCO to make a payment plan and cancel a shutoff notice for one resident threatened with having their power shut off.

This time around, PEPCO locked their doors and forced everyone who had showed up to pay their bill to line up outside to be admitted one at a time. At their main door, a security guard was posted to check employee ID’s at one door while all other panels were locked.

More people receiving huge bills from PEPCO spoke out on March 21 in front of PEPCO. One person was billed $700 for electricity they hadn’t used. Another was facing a cutoff with a refrigerator full on insulin for diabetes. PEPCO’s suggesting to them was recounted as being “get an icebox,” the same solution they seem to advocate for power outages caused by storms.

The march originally took 9th st in front of PEPCO, but the cops decided they needed 9th st for traffic to pass, asking the protesters to move the the sidewalk blocking PEPCO instead. OurDC happily complied with that, sealing PEPCO’s doors with a simicircle of protesters. Speakers demanded to be let in, or failing that, that PEPCO at least let in the folks who had shown up to pay their bills. Many of the people in line, for their part, made it quite clear that they supported the protest.

Massive march protests string of hate crimes against Trans and Gay people

Starting a little after 7PM on the 20th of March, a crowd that appeared to be in excess of 1,000 people marched in DC against the recent string of beatings, “robberies” and outright murders of Gay and especially Trans people in DC.

Video of the march

The Washington Post is reporting the march as 600 people, but that estimate looked to me like another lowball estimate from them. A march of 10 columns of 60 people each would be much shorter than the March 20th event and about as wide. This march occupied at least oe full block at a time of Irving street, all the way across.

The march proceeded East on Irving Street, scene of some of the crimes, one of which left a Gay man in the hospital with a broken jaw after an assault that lasted over three blocks of pursuit, according to a speaker. Present in the march was the mother of a Trans woman who was murdered on East Capitol Street. These murders of Trans folks seem to attract far less attention from the police than things like shoplifting at Neiman-Marcus does.

At the intersection of Ga Ave and Irving street, a “Radical Queer” contingent including some people who work with Occupy set up an shrine with candles and posters of one of the Trans women who was murdered. Similar shrines may have been left at other intersections according to a poster on Twitter, I can only confirm the one I saw at Ga Ave and Irving.

At this point, police started pushing some of the radical Queer folks, trying to prevent them from gaining control of the northbound lanes of Ga Ave. There was some unnecessary roughness, the police would have shown more respect if it was the conduct of some of their own at a memorial for a fallen officer in questions!

As the march proceeded down Ga Ave towards U st, the police aggression seemed to die out, and the march finally passed west on U st. A left turn took the march south on 14th st-past the Black Cat where at large candidates for council were having a candidates forum. They were challenged to come out and show some respect for the fallen, but not one of them did. Finally the march turned west again on R st, finishing up at 17th and R street.

Ringlings beats, maybe maces tigers ONSTAGE at 7PM 3-17 show

Spectators at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey circus on the last show of the night on March 17 got more than they paid for when a tiger trainer sprayed the big cats in the face with an unknown liquid, then beat them for two minutes. At least 6 circusgoers independantly reported this to activists. On March 18, a circusgoer reported that the tigers were once again beaten onstage.

audio:WSQT Radio’s coverage featuring anbinterview with activist who ran projeector and was told about the beatings/macings of the tigers

No circusgoer had yet posted video of this incident, if I see any I will link to it.

Ringlings has admitted in the past to firing pepper spray at lions and tigers. What they used on stage could have been more pepper spray(most likely), ammonia, or water with the intention the cats would associate it with being maced.

If either pepper spray or ammonia was fired indoors at the Veizon Center, that trainer risked causing a human stampede for the exits, with an average of ten thousand people in the seats. In such a stampede, human injuries would be almost certain and deaths not out of the question. Both have happened before at concerts and other events where the crowd was stampeded by any kind of incident.

VIdeo of animal abuse by circus shown outside Ringling Bros circus

Once again, Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey circus is in town. Animal rights activists showed up on opening night with a video projector and footage of elephants, big cats, and a lion or tiger cup (a KITTEN) being beaten and abused by their trainers. The video showing was repeated each night for the entire duration of Ringling’s run in DC, culminating in the use of two video screens on the last night of their DC shows.

Video: March 15 Ringlings protest and projection

Video:March 18 daytime protest

Video evening March 18:Activists show video on two screens, the smaller screen showing graphic footage of Ringlings trainers torturing baby elephants, from the 2009 trial.

The video was shown as the circus was letting out every time they played the Verizon Center after dark, which removes the issue of asking people to throw away tickets they have already paid for. People sickened by the way Ringling treats their animals are unlikely to return next year.

Enough of this and Ringlings will have to remove the animal acts from their lineup and focus on human performers. That means keeping the acrobatic shows and bringing in new acts more relevant to how people live today. Animal acts were relevant to how circusgoers in the 1800′s lived, mechanized acts and those inspired by film and video games would attract larger audiences today.

In the meantime, enough people disapprove of the abuse of animals on the circus circuit that the Verizon Center, which can be configured to hold 20,000 people for an event like a circus, can only sell an average of 10,000 tickets per show. This is in spite of the fact that they are one of the less expensive arena acts. That means the aniaml acts are destroying jobs for human performers by driving away business. Animsal activists may make this worse in the short run, but if the circus would listen their business in trhe long run would be better than ever-just ask the Circque de Soleil!

Occupy DC states funeral march for 1st Amendment after Obama signs HR347

On the evening of the 12th of March, Occupy DC (both camps) marched through the streets of DC and protested on the base of the White House fence in defiance of newly-signed HR347, the Federal Tresspass law protecting the White House, all the GOP candidates for President, the G20,the Chicago NATO Summit, and the GOP and Dem Conventions.

Video: Occupy DC funeral march for 1st Amendment, the White House action, and the night march

Action begain with a march from McPherson Square to Freedom Plaza to pick up reinforcements. The three main banners of the march were the entire First Amendment to the Constitution, at some times forming a square formation three lanes of traffic wide. From Freedom Plaza the march went to the White House, and the standard “civil disobediance” center sidewalk location.

The Secret Service did not take the preoffered bait at the White House, declining to interfere even when Occupiers stood on the concrete base of the White House fence above the sidewalk. After about 1/2 hour or a little longer, Occupiers re-took the streets.

At one point people were calling for a march on the World Bank and the march began to head that way, but at the right turn to go south on 19th st everyone suddenly decided to stop and block K street. After police managed to push march into moving again, Occupiers stopped again, attempting to hold an entire General Assembly on K street like they did after the police raid. The cops were building up fast, however, so Occupiers soon had to start moving again and returned to McPherson Square for the GA. At one point, a K-9 cop in an SUV drove into the crowd, only to be surrounded and driven back out, after which he stayed about a block away.

Wells Fargo protest catches cops “recruiting” prisoners for GEO Group

On the 9th of March, activists showed up outside the Wells Fargo bank branch at Ga Ave and T street to give out fliers. Every Friday there are protests or outreach sessions outside Wells Fargo branches as a project of Occupy DC’s Criminal Justice project.

At about 6 PM, a police “jump out squad” started searching three men about a block away, then over a dozen cop cars responded to a fight that may have been a diversion to protect the original targets of the police.

Video focusing on the role of the jumpout squad as recruiters for GEO Group’s prisons

The fliers given out emphasized the role of Wells Fargo in investing in the GEO Group’s private prisons. The folks giving out the fliers warned that depositor’s money would be diverted into paying billions in fines Wells Fargo is paying for illegal foreclosures.

People were also told face to face that Wells Fargo, by paying to lock up Black and Brown men and women, is literally investing in slavery, getting about $30,000 per head for each prisoner from DC. One woman complained that Wells Fargo took her home, so she’s suing them.

The police who showed up at about 6PM to search and detain people for what appeared to be beer, were deemed to be recruiters for Wells Fargo’s GEO Group investments. In this sense, they occupy the exact same position in creating Wells Fargo’s investments that slave hunters/buyers had in creating the Plantations.

A few minutes into what appeared to be searches of people who had NOT at the time been placed under arrest, two teenage women started fighting on the other side of busy 7th street. Some of the jumpouts diverted to the fight, but not all of them. Instead, backup police cars started arriving like flies on a horse dropping. One of the original protesters estimated 12 carloads of cops for a fight between two people at 7th and T streets!

No matter who wins the fight, if anyone is arrested and catches a felony charge, Wells Fargo wins. Wells Fargo, though GEO Group, will get $30,000 for each person convicted of a felony and shipped off to Rivers Correctional facility or any of the other GEO Group prisons used by the DC courts.

Therefore, anyone with an account in Wells Fargo is being asked to move their money, as one depositor told protesters she was in the process of doing right now.

Hundreds protest as Obama threatens Iran with war at AIPAC address

On the 4th of March, Obama gave perhaps the worst speech of his career, threatening Iran with war while addressing AIPAC, the American Israeli Political Action Committee. Outside, protesters set up in three positions where his motorcade had to pass, plus the main rally where his speech was broadcast over the PA-and answered.

Video highlights of March 4 protest

The big March 4 protest was followed by Code Pink and Occupy AIPAC’s “mic check” of the Israeli Ambassador and a Congresswoman at a “stopping Iran” panel the next day, for which they were assaulted, one of them dragged to the ground and choked with his own tie.

Code Pinks’s video, hosted on Youtube Usual Google privacy warnings apply.

On the evening of March 5, protesters returned to AIPAC at the Washington Convention center. This gala is reputed to attract about half of Congress, and some of the other attendees had to run a guantlet of protesters.

Several times, traffic on K street was interrupted by protesters, but never for more than a few minutes at a time Police did NOT like it when a small detachment of protesters discovered the main screening checkpoint on L street, but their “orders” to not proceed north on 7th st were defied without consequences.

Video of the AIPAC dinner gala protest