"LOCKDOWN," is a ten minute documentary by Mutual Aid Media on the Tar Sands Blockade -- a group of activists and landowners in Texas who have built a campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. This short documentary follows activists as they plan an action camp, lead workshops, and execute a lockdown.

"Two factory bosses were arrested in Bangladesh on Saturday, 72 hours after the deadly collapse of a building where low-cost garments were made for Western brands, as the death toll rose to 325 and angry workers protested on the streets of the capital."

"The owner of the eight-storey building that fell like a pack of cards around more than 3,000 workers was still on the run."

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Bangladeshi police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of protesters demanding better working conditions after a garment factory collapsed, killing hundreds, earlier this week. M Asaduzzam, a police officer in the control room, called the protests "volatile." Asaduzzam said police used “rubber bullets and tear gas” to disperse the crowd. Meanwhile, the death toll in Wednesday’s deadly building collapse has risen to 300, with authorities expecting to find even more bodies as they search the building. A total of 50 people were found alive Friday, raising the hopes of thousands of relatives. The collapse came just months after a fire in November at a factory that makes clothes for Walmart and other Western labels.

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Six activists from the environmental group Greenpeace boarded a coal carrier bound for South Korea on the outskirts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Wednesday calling for an end to exports of the fuel:

The Guardian reports:

The activists boarded the ship from inflatable boats at sunrise and had previously been on board the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's own purpose-built ship. They presented a letter to the captain explaining the action and have set up camp at the bow of the ship.

A spokesman for Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior said: "We are calling on the rest of Australia to take whatever action is possible to ensure that we do not double our coal exports. We cannot deal with the climate change that will result from that."

According to research commissioned by Greenpeace, Australia's coal export expansion is the second-largest of 14 proposed fossil fuel enterprises. "We cannot pretend Australia is playing its part to avoid dangerous climate change if these shipments continue," said Greenpeace senior climate campaigner Dr. Georgina Woods.

"Australia's coal exports are the nation's greatest contribution to climate change and plans are under way to roughly double the volume of coal we export," Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Yet every tonne of coal that is exported will return to us as climate change: bushfires, heatwaves and drought."

Ports on the Barrier Reef coast currently export 156 million tons of coal each year, and there are plans to expand that to 953 tons within the next decade. By 2020 an estimated 7,000 ships will traverse the reef every year, up from 5,000 in 2010.

"We have no idea how it's going to play out at this stage," said protester Emma Giles from on board the Panama-flagged ship.

"Either the coastguard will come and get us, or we end up in Korea."

PANDA (People Against the NDAA) Oregon protests against indefinite military detention, the application of the laws of war on U.S. soil, and secret arrests.

Recently they held a "Orange Jumpsuit March." Hundreds of people saw the group, one in Military garb, two in prison jumpsuits, and several others handing out information and getting people signed up to help.

From the PANDA website:

Our Mission is to nonviolently nullify, strike down, repeal, stop, void and fight the indefinite detention provisions, Sections 1021 and 1022, of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2012, to fight for American civil liberties, to combat laws restricting liberty in the interest of National Security, to support current government officials that are doing so and to engage a younger generation in the politics of the United States so this cannot happen again.

Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade from Garrett Graham on Vimeo.

"Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade" is an hour-long documentary film written and directed by Garrett Graham in collaboration with the Tar Sands Blockade and features exclusive video footage shot by the blockaders themselves during the course of over six months of sustained resistance.

In 2012, Texas landowners and environmental activists came together to organize resistance against a dangerous pipeline being built by a Canadian corporation to bring tar sands oil from Alberta Canada to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. This hazardous project continues despite unprecedented opposition from indigenous communities, local farmers and even global environmental movements. From this struggle, a community of resistance was born that has attracted volunteers from around the continent who have successfully defied this multi-million dollar corporation with the power of non-violent direct action.

The film is meant to be both a celebration of the blockades' achievements and a primer for those interested in joining the campaign. It explains the dangers of tar sands extraction and the risks to public health posed by the pipeline as well as the strategy of non-violent direct action that has been delaying the pipeline so far.

The story takes place in the backwoods of East Texas where the pipeline crosses farmlands and homesteads as well as aquifers and old growth forests. You will hear the voices of the blockaders who are risking their lives to stop this pipeline. In the Texas heat, they have locked themselves to heavy machinery, and braved the elements by living in trees. Hear these courageous folks in their own words.

Blockadia Rising is just the opening chapter in this ongoing movement to stop this pipeline and halt the extraction of the Canadian tar sands, but the blockaders see themselves as a part of a larger struggle against the consequences of run-away climate-change caused by unchecked extraction of natural resources by industry at the expense of both human and non-human communities. This film speaks to all movements for environmental and social justice and showcases direct action techniques that have never been attempted before.

Blockadia Rising: Voices from the tar Sands Blockade (2013) was written, edited and narrated by Garrett Graham, an active participant of the Tar Sands Blockade who continues to support their efforts. This film is dedicated to them, and everyone fighting for environmental and social justice.

The Campaign: tarsandsblockade.org
The Filmmaker: garrettgrahamonline.wordpress.com

[Via Garrett Graham]

Since their first issue in December 2011, Tidal has made it their practice to give name to our struggle, wrestling with the big ideas that propel us into the streets, with what we should do when we get there, and with where there in fact is.

This Friday, the folks at Occupy Theory will release their fourth issue of the magazine, featuring original pieces by organizers of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Sandy, Strike Debt and Free University. Join them that night for conversation as we move together towards the empowerment that greater clarity and the free exchange of ideas can bring.

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

Occupy in the News

Jenna Pope documented last Sunday’s Forward on Climate Rally. Beautiful sights--the vistas of activists in D.C. to make their voices heard about climate change--beautifully captured.

Kevin Gosztola writes at FireDogLake’s The Dissenter blog about the recent history of climate change actions and points out just how high the stakes are. Our only hope to defeat the monstrosity of the Keystone XL Pipeline is continued, passionate action, that is to say, “...if everyone demonstrating channeled the spirit of the Occupy movement...”

Les Leopold of the Huffington Post explains why “the raison d’etre for Occupy Wall Street is proving correct. Much of high finance is based on a ‘corrupt business plan.’” Proof of Wall Street’s corruption continues to mount, with ratings agencies on the take, money laundered for drug cartels, and rampant insider trading, among many other ethical and moral malignancies.

On occupywallstreet.net Heather Marsh argues for a society with no financial system at all, a currency-free system in which the endless cycle of excessive consumption and meaningless busywork is ended. The proof that this could work already exists. “With no financial incentives,” Marsh says, “the internet has managed to create collaborative efforts which have pushed the potential of society far beyond what could have been possible before the internet.”

On the OWS Direct Action Blog, Mark Adams gives us the push we need to meet, to talk, to plan for spring.

Revisit Liberty Plaza in full swing in Why We Occupy, an open-source book of interviews gathered in the park in 2011. See the park grow and change in real-time through the heartfelt words of the participants.

Continue reading »

Jodie Randolph tells the story of the struggle to keep her home.

Jodie Randolph is a small-business owner in Alameda, California. She is also a breast-cancer survivor, and is in treatment for colon cancer.

Jodie has been fighting to stay in her home for years. Companies affiliated with Morgan
Stanley shuttled the loan around from one subsidiary to the other until they foreclosed on her. Morgan Stanley’s tactics have included:

• Pushing her into a predatory refinance
• Moving her loan around from company to company so she couldn’t get a fix on who to negotiate with
• Removing the lawyer for Morgan Stanley who was actually negotiating with Jodie when they were
close to reaching a mutually acceptable plan.
• Stunningly, breaking in and changing the locks to her house while she was at a chemotherapy
session.

Supported by a delegation of her family, friends, neighbors, the Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and other foreclosure activists, Jodie has staved off eviction from her home since November 2012.

In a terrific initial victory for people’s action and home defense, Jodie was able to meet Monday, with Morgan Stanley. In November, when Jodie came to Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense, she had no prospect of a bank meeting, and all negotiations and legal actions seemed over and done.

She and her allies sat down fairly amicably with bank representatives, including a lawyer flown in from Southern California, and presented her proposal for how the foreclosure could be lifted and a fair loan modification could be put in place. Morgan Stanley is ‘considering’ her proposal.

In the meantime, the home defense continues as everyone hopes and waits.

On Monday, December 31st, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post reported that weapons and high explosive powder were found in the home of a Greenwich Village couple. The article also featured an evidence-free assertion that one of the accused is an “Occupy Wall Street activist”.

Take Action Now to Protect OWS from false allegations of terrorism

As the OWS PR working group emphasized in the immediate aftermath of the story, “There is nothing… to support a link between OWS and the individual arrested."

The NYPD further does not believe that that the accused was active in any political movements, as reported in the New York Times. And when the New York Post reporter, Jamie Schram, was asked by Atiq Zabinski of the OWS Media Working Group to cite his source for the OWS connection, he refused, and abruptly ended the conversation, referring Zabinski to the Post’s legal department.

Occupiers have long been experiencing the tangible impact of hyping falsehoods about Occupy Wall Street, such as how it contributes to real and documented police violence, unconstitutional domestic spying activities, and the marginalization of constituencies and views that deserve respectful treatment by reporters.

The scope of this problem has recently become even more pronounced through the “disclosures that FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

In response the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team decided to start a petition for concerned OWS activists demanding a retraction and an apology from the New York Post on the same print and Web pages as the original accusation.

Since its inception Occupy Wall Street has been firmly committed to non-violence. Yet this is far from the first time that the Post has distorted the facts of a story in order to associate the movement with violence.

Sign the petition today, and then we can go deliver them in person to Rupert Murdoch.

[Via some of the good folks within the Occupy movement]

Anonymous - We Are Legion - The Story of the Hacktivists (2012) from Anon Best Videoes on Vimeo.

In recent years, the radical online community known as Anonymous has been associated with attacks or “raids” on hundreds of targets. Angered by issues as diverse as copyright abuse and police brutality, they’ve taken on child pornographers, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and even forced a standoff with Mexican drug cartels. They’ve hit corporate targets like Sony, cyber-security firms like HBGary Federal and would-be web controllers like the Church of Scientology.

They shut down Mastercard, Visa and Paypal after those groups froze financial transactions to Wikileaks. Along with other hacktivist groups like Telecomix, they’ve launched cyber attacks against foreign governments in support of the Arab Spring. They served as tech support for the Occupy movement and have put their mark on countless uprisings around the world. One participant described their protests as “ultra coordinated motherf*ckery.”

So who is Anonymous?

They’ve been called criminals, “hackers on steroids” and even terrorists. But the vast majority of those who identify as Anonymous don’t break the law. They see themselves as activists and protectors of free speech, and tend to rise up most powerfully when they perceive a threat to internet freedom or personal privacy. Whether you are a soccer mom or a member of Congress, you live in an electronic landscape that has exploded with largely unchecked intrusion and surveillance. You are tracked by government databases while corporate advertisers are looking to buy your personal data for pennies. In this landscape, the existence of the collective internet culture called Anonymous makes the case for anonymity.

Using tools of disruption and spectacle, they have also become the face of dissent for a variety of human rights and information freedom groups around the globe. They are a legion of loud but largely masked geeks, hackers, pranksters and outraged citizens who have unwittingly redefined civil disobedience for the digital age, and found themselves in the middle of one of the most important battles of our time.

WE ARE LEGION: The Story of the Hacktivists, from Director, Writer, Producer Brian Knappenberger, takes us inside the complex culture and history of Anonymous. The film explores early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater, and then moves to Anonymous’ own raucous and unruly beginnings on the website 4Chan.

Through interviews with current members – some recently returned from prison, others still awaiting trial – as well as writers, academics and major players in various “raids,” WE ARE LEGION traces the collective’s breathtaking evolution from merry pranksters to a full-blown, global movement, one armed with new weapons of civil disobedience for an online world.

Today, delegates from nearly two hundred nations are gathering in Qatar for the UN'sThis new campaign is spreading an urgent message face-to-face all over the country, as this group of activists visit over twenty cities in the USA. Their message: it's simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming – anything more than this risks total catastrophe for all life on the planet. The problem: fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five more times the safe amount . . . And they’re planning to burn it all – unless we rise up to stop them."> COP18 – the latest round of UN climate talks aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

While they all try to talk it out in Qatar, Bill McKibben and his grassroots initiative with 350.org may achieve far more on the ground than any solemn swear of re-commitment to the Kyoto Protocol will at Qatar. This new campaign is spreading an urgent message face-to-face all over the country, as this group of activists visit over twenty cities in the USA. Their message: it's simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming – anything more than this risks total catastrophe for all life on the planet. The problem: fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five more times the safe amount . . . And they’re planning to burn it all – unless we rise up to stop them.