Fighting Tar Sands In New England | Asher Platts | Resistance Report Segment

Originally posted at AcronymTV



ExxonMobil plans to build a toxin-spewing export terminal on the shores of Casco Bay in Maine.

According to 350.org:
“Such a terminal would allow the flow of millions of gallons of Canadian tar sands to be transported through the region, putting our planet, our local waterways, and community health at unacceptable risk.
All evidence indicates that ExxonMobil – the majority owner of the PMPL - wants to pump toxic tar sands oil through New England and South Portland is now a crucial battle line in the fight to stop them.
In addition to the climate change risks of tar sands oil production, additional local impacts – with or without with a spill or rupture – would be devastating.

As the CCSP says firmly, "The threats that tar sands pose to our environment, health, water supply and air quality are simply unacceptable." “

Asher Platts files this report, which includes an interview with Bob Klotz of 350Maine.org.




tags
Tar Sands, Tar Sands oil, ExxonMobil, 350.org, Casco Bay, 350, Portland, Maine, Asher Platts, Bob Klotz, Exxon cares, Acronym TV, ATV, Resistance Report,

The Milkman's Union: The Golden Room

I can't wait for their next album to come out.

http://www.themilkmansunion.bandcamp.com/
http://www.myspace.com/themilkmansunion
http://www.themilkmansunion.com

Is Capitalism Unpatriotic?

I think it just might be...

Was sending #occupywallst protesters onto the bridge an NYPD arrest tactic?

What I'm hearing from people on the ground, is that police were actually directing the Occupy Wall Street protesters onto the traffic lanes, where they were corralled with orange netting, detained, and placed onto buses.

I don't know if this is true, or just a rumor that is circulating and a large contingent of protesters actually intended to shut down Brooklyn-bound traffic.

However...

This photo comparing the New York Times coverage of the arrests spanning 20 minutes, show two very different versions of what happened.


UPDATE 11:59PM Oct 1

From The New York Times:

“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” said the head police spokesman, Paul J. Browne. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”

But many protesters said that they thought the police had tricked and trapped them, allowing them onto the bridge and even escorting them across, only to surround them in orange netting after hundreds of them had entered.

“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who was in the march but was not arrested.

[...]

There were no physical barriers, though, and at one point, the marchers began walking up the roadway with the police commanders in front of them – seeming, from a distance, as if they were leading the way. The Chief of Department Joseph J. Esposito, and a horde of other white-shirted commanders, were among them.

[...]

After allowing the protesters to walk about a third of the way to Brooklyn, the police then cut the marchers off and surrounded them with orange nets on both sides, trapping hundreds of people, said Mr. Dunn. As protesters at times chanted “white shirts, white shirts,” officers began making arrests, at one point plunging briefly into the crowd to grab a man.

The police said that those arrested were taken to several police stations and were being charged with disorderly conduct, at a minimum.

[...]

Etan Ben-Ami, 56, a psychotherapist from Brooklyn who was up on the walkway, said that the police seemed to make a conscious decision to allow the protesters to claim the road. “They weren’t pushed back,” he said. “It seemed that they moved at the same time.”

Mr. Ben-Ami said he left the walkway and joined the crowd on the road. “It seemed completely permitted,” he said. “There wasn’t a single policeman saying ‘don’t do this’.”

He added: “We thought they were escorting us because they wanted us to be safe.” He left the bridge when he saw officers unrolling the nets as they prepared to make arrests.

It seems to me like protesters were in fact told by the NYPD to use the roadway, or at least led to believe that it was okay.

---

UPDATE 12:19PM Oct 2nd

This eyewitness account of the arrests provides more mounting evidence that the police premeditatedly allowed the protesters onto the bridge, with the intent to trap and detain them.

"It seemed to me that the police did nothing to stop the protesters and it would have been very easy for them to guide all of us onto the walkway. As it was, they were guiding the march and traffic and I neither saw nor heard any resistance from the cops on the scene.

And there were a LOT of them. More than enough to have kept us off the road."

[snip]

Photographic evidence of a shitload of cops waiting on the sidewalk, doing nothing to stop people from entering the roadway

Police waiting on the sidelines to arrest a large number of protesters

[snip]

"And then we all stopped. The people on the walkway stopped to watch the people on the road. Those on the road looked like they had been stopped by a whole lot of cops and those, now infamous, orange cordons. At no point did I hear anyone talk about not crossing the bridge. Also, the fact that no one was directing us to stay on the road (or off it, for that matter) suggests to me that the point was to cross, not stop, and the police interfered."

---

UPDATE: 12:33PM Oct 2nd

I just found this eyewitness report from AlterNet reporters Kristen Gwynne and Sarah Seltzer:

"At the time of this posting, hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters, members of the press and bystanders are being penned by the police on the Brooklyn Bridge, waiting to get arrested one by one. (The livestream is in the previous post.) According to eyewitnesses, the NYPD closed the bridge to traffic as the surge of protesters arrived, but then used the crowd's presence on the roadway to corral them in on both sides, so that no exit is possible."

[snip]

"They're arresting us one by one. I just asked a cop and they said they're going to arrest all of us. There are hundreds of people who dont have room to sit down. We're just clammed in."

---

UPDATE FROM THE FREE CHANGE COLLECTIVE

A member of Free Change Collective has been arrested twice, the first time he was arrested for no reason, the second time for being in the traffic lane of the Brooklyn bridge. He may be detained until his scheduled court hearing, which is months from now.

---

VIDEO of the Brooklyn Bridge Arrests From The Free Change Collective:

Click the spotlight in the video immediately below to subscribe to their channel

The Brooklyn Bridge Arrests AS THEY HAPPEN

They just told us to hold hands and walk off the bridge

The Police releasing the "fancy" Media:

And now some more pics of the event on the Brooklyn Bridge:

via Gothamist.com






More photos and context after the jump

Occupy Maine Rally

As the blog post this was originally from became increasingly about underhanded police tactics at the Brooklyn Bridge, this section of the article became less and less relevant. So I've clipped it and moved it to it's own entry.

The Occupy Maine Rally

Started today, and was featured on national television on the nightly news, along with other cities that are holding solidarity rallies. It was drizzling steadily all day, and the crowd remained about 150 people, petering out towards 3pm when the general assembly started.



During my time there I went to subsidized housing areas to put up posters. I ran into lots of people who were either homeless, or living in shelters, who had not heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests. They saw this poster, asked what it was about, and after I explained, they would smile and then list off a really reasonable and intelligent list of complaints of their own-- talking about the military industrial complex, about how the wealth of the elite is derived from the debt of the poor, and how we are willing to spend millions to kill people, but we don't have a dime to give anybody healthcare or housing. This happened over and over again and was really quite heartening.




Another group of people outside a homeless shelter initially yelled at me for putting up flyers, and one came over to tear it down. First he read it, then he yelled back to his friends, "Naw, it's cool."

---

BrokeFix takes LePage to Court

nice.

So this is kind of awesome

You might recognize these images from these blog posts in which I asked you to "please distribute these images widely":

Maine Welcome Sign redux
I've Had The Wind Knocked Out of me, but never the hurricane

And then there's the Kill All Art piece which, I first found out about here (it's not by me, though I have permission from the artist to use it on t-shirts).

And lo and behold-- somebody did more than just reupload them to their own flickr/facebook/twitpic account, or sharing them on their friend's facebook walls. They "uploaded" them to an actual wall somewhere. That's kind of awesome!

PortlandPaste claims to be

...an anonymous collective of artists, activists, and troublemakers, nonviolently fighting a war of ideas inside your head, and on your walls.

I look forward to more from these folks! I'm really glad that they used my designs, I also hope they come up with some original stuff of their own.

Obama Visits Maine, April Fools come out (pt4)

I'll bet you thought I was only going to interview crazy Tea Party people, didn't you?

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