From the open publishing newswire: The Trans-Pacific FTA is being negotiated behind closed doors between a dozen countries throughout the Pacific Rim. Journalists, most Members of Congress and the people most likely to be impacted by these negotiations are barred from reviewing the U.S. proposals, but approximately 600 corporate lobbyists certified as official "citizen advisers" have regular access to both the negotiating documents and the negotiators. Join us as we learn more about this pact; about the impact of past trade deals on our communities; and to send a message to Senator Ron Wyden and other elected officials that we will not accept another business-as-usual trade pact that offshores jobs, reduces the tax base and puts a downward pressure on the wages and benefits of jobs that are left.


Sunday, 2/12 * 3:00 - 4:30pm Redmond, OR
Monday, 2/13 * 6:30 - 8:00pm Eugene, OR
Wednesday, 2/15 * 6:30 - 8:00pm Ashland, OR
Wednesday, 2/22 * 6:00 - 7:30pm Portland, OR
Thursday, 2/23 * 3:00 - 4:00pm Monmouth, OR
Thursday, 2/23 * 6:30 - 8:00pm Salem, OR

Help us promote these events on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/events/213487345409982/

 http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/oregon/fair-trade-events/
phone: 503) 736-9777

From the open publishing newswire: The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles.
London, UK - Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about Occupy Wall Street I get some variation of the same lecture:

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense - the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don't you realise all this radical language is going to alienate people? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"

If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honourable place. After all, since the financial crash of 2007, there have been dozens of attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of the United States' financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. It was only on August 2, when a small group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians showed up at a meeting called by one such group and effectively wooed everyone away from the planned march and rally to create a genuine democratic assembly, on basically anarchist principles, that the stage was set for a movement that Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa were willing to embrace. [...]

From the open publishing newswire: We've all seen the recent images of the police brutality against Occupy, but this conduct hasn't occurred overnight. For years, US police abuse has been spiralling upwards, this article sharing a uniquely insightful vision of what that's meant, how it's occurred, and an amazing effort to awake America.

Excerpt: When we see these brutally nightmarish visions of police violence against innocent protesters, we're shocked because we haven't been aware that our police have behaved this way for many years now. Of course, that's also why we see -- despite the video evidence -- some people blaming the Occupy supporters for their own brutalization, refusing to believe that our police could do such harm without good reason. Even worse though, our 'authorities' are well aware of this tendency, and play upon it, i.e., the claims that the UC Davis police felt 'threatened' in an attempt to legitimize the brutal pepper spraying videotaped there.

Attempts to somehow 'demonize the victim' are an old story, and it's far easier to blame most victims than face the far harsher reality of what our society has become, how empty some of the assumptions about our police, about our own safety, are.

Continue Reading: link to www.opednews.com

From the open publishing newswire: Recently it has come to my attention that the global Occupations are being blamed for the disorderly behavior that is taking place at many of our protest sites. This is understandable, given that the power structure is hell bent on discrediting us by any means at their disposal. It is also laughable.

The problems we are facing were not created by us, but we deign to shed light on them and so we are blamed for them. The truth is, every person at our protest is there because the system is broken. If there were no occupations, the number of people experiencing homelessness would remain unchanged. If there were no occupations, there would remain on American streets over a million runaway youth.

From the open publishing newswire: Post Occupy Everywhere news snippets here!

If you have some news from the hundreds of occupations around the country and the world post it here! Lots of little news snippets are of interest but too small for an article, so post them as comments to this article!

From the open publishing newswire: Viv Miley, a participant in Occupy Sydney, told *Green Left Weekly* the police moved in and told people they had to move immediately or would be arrested. He said groups of occupiers linked arms and began chanting, before police began violently dragging people off... A rally had already been called in Martin Place for next Saturday, October 29 in support of the call for global rallies by the Occupy movement in support of a Robin Hood tax on global financial institutions. Miley said: "The occupation showed there is a lot of hope and inspiration by the Occupy Wall Street movement and the movement in Spain. It has captured people's imagination.

[According to The World Socialist Website:] A violent operation, involving hundreds of riot and mounted police, the Critical Incident Response Unit, the dog squad and plainclothes officers, was launched yesterday against the Occupy Melbourne protest camp. At least 95 people were arrested, many after being brutally assaulted by multiple police officers. Demonstrators were kicked, punched and blinded with capsicum spray. One was hospitalised after two police pinned him to the ground while another kicked him in the groin... http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/49176

From the open publishing newswire: Break out session at the Portland Moving Planet event, September 24, 2011. Session is about the failure of governments to deal with Climate Change and how the people, including people in Portland are stepping up to the plate.
Climate Justice Portland[9 min. Video]

Climate Justice Portland was established from members of the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee, who in April 2010 had attended the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba Bolivia

Inaugurated by Bolivian President Evo Morales, the Conference was attended by more than 20,000 attendants from over 125 countries. The meeting, supported by numerous grassroots organizations, was designed to act as an alternative to the United Nations' continuing discussions on climate change.

The Rights of Mother Earth

Here locally, Climate Justice Portland is working on several fronts to implement necessary changes in our relationship with the planet.
First, the group insists that we need to be addressing the root causes of climate change, and move beyond expecting that merely life style changes will be sufficient to solve this problem.
"We need to be addressing industrial pollution, we need to be addressing what role our nation is playing, and U.S. based corporations are playing, in changing the ecology of the planet.

The second aspect of strategy is to determine "who is being most affected by this. Who are the people in the front lines of climate change. We look to the global south, people whose islands are disappearing, entire populations of people are migrating, whose agricultural communities are completely being devastated by climate change and look for solutions from them."

Related PIMC Video Links

[Nissan Leaf tour...] | [Decentralizing Our Energy Grid] | 350oregon Speeches- montage, main stage ...]

[350.oregon.org]

From the open publishing newswire: [LIVE FEEDS]

Live feeds and archived footage is all online:

link to www.facebook.com
Streaming chat ...LIVE feeds and archived footage:  http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

(suggestion) Watch archived footage from Tuesday Morning: "Arrests This Morning @ 7:20" it is archived on LIVESTREAM - popo drag protesters on cement, cuffs makeing hands bleed ... This is not my America ...Faschist Police Hurt Protesters for Wall Street Croonies -

[LIVE FEED]
homepage:  http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

[Full LINK ARCHIVE to Donate-Contact]
 http://tiny.cc/h9gvo

[Day 5 Wednesday - four arrests - protest continues]
[Day 6 Thursday - eight arrests - protest continues]
[Day 7 Friday - one arrest (face was covered) - protest continues]
[Day 8 Saturday - 80 arrested, 1 of media team - protest continues]
[Day 9 Sunday - 0 arrested - protest continues]
[Day 10 Monday - protest continues]

From the open publishing newswire: The following is an interview with Melina, a twenty-one year old member of the KOE's youth organization (KOE, pronounced "Koy" on the streets of Greece, stands for Communist Organization of Greece). Melina comes from Patras, a city with an occupied square simlar to that of Athens. Patras is also home to great polarization around the question of immigrants in Greece.

 link to thefirecollective.org

From the open publishing newswire: EPISODE #3 of B Media's monthly variety show was inspired by GREEN CAPITALISM and connects indigenous and environmental struggles at Hood River, the Bank of America's financing of the Alberta Tar Sands, City Repair's Earth Day festival, the economic justice rally in solidarity with Wisconsin, and ties it together with Slingshot's radical history of April (the cruelest month), an unexpected visit by a cadre of Unemployed Superheros... and YouTube cat videos.


View episode here  http://blip.tv/bmediacollective/variety-tree-earth-day-inc-5288049

This episode explores the connections between environment destruction and the economic and cultural systems that enable it. Movements and actions by groups like Rising Tide North America, City Repair, the PDX Climate Justice Coalition and the alternatives they advocate for are contrast with the banking system and unchecked capitalism, the increasing atomization of American life, and the Tea party. Our goal was to highlight the people doing important work in our communities, and single out the elements distracting us from that work on a daily basis.

From the open publishing newswire: June 2nd: To the indigenous peoples and peoples of the world. To the struggles built from below and whose origin is to the left, committed to the emblematic changes to which we are all dedicated and are a fundamental part of changing the world. To the women and men of this country who carry the world on their backs, the weight of a history plagued by injustice imposed by power. To those who dream of a great homeland, free and without any more blood, with which the poorest always pay, we who have decided to march to liberate our peoples at the cost of our lives, so that tomorrow our history has a future.

Our land, as in all of our continent called America, has been filled with innocent blood... Today, as they force us to mobilize in a caravan and they want to impose on us a destiny that is not ours, we have decided to renounce this path of death, we built the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala and we reassert it in order to give our families and people an alternative way of life...Therefore, today our intention to recover our community, the MARCH OF THE COLOR OF BLOOD is the cry of our peoples... JUSTICE FOR ALL OUR DEAD! JUSTICE FOR OUR PEOPLES! Jail Antonio Cruz Garcia and his paramilitaries!

For the autonomy of the Triqui people!

municipioautonomodesanjuancopala.wordpress.com

cdefensayjustica.blogspot.com
email: cdefensayjusticiamasjc-at-gmail.com

From the open publishing newswire: I've traveled to Athens, Greece ahead of Mayday and a General Strike. Here are some observations for folks back home for insight and inspiration....From http://www.insurgentphoto.blogspot.com.

Exarchia is known throughout Athens as the center of social struggles. This densely packed neighborhood has a reputation as being anti-establishment and is home to students, anarchists, artists, and leftists of all stripes. A month of nationwide rioting was sparked in December 2008 when a 15 year-old local high school student and anarchist was shot and killed by police near Exarchia Square. Most Athenians hate the police, and when this young boy was murdered the whole country exploded. On the corner where Alexis was shot, his mother has mounted a memorial plaque which has his photo as well as the following words (translated from greek):

"Here on the 6th of December 2008, without any reason, a child's smile was extinguished from the innocent fifteen-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulous by the bullets of unapologetic killers."

Second Update | More Photos
Insurgent Photo Blogspot

From the open publishing newswire: Winona La Duke, noted Native American activist and author, speaking recently at the Native American Center at Portland State University. Winona spoke for about ? an hour about the Alberta Tar Sands and also about the large oil extraction equipment being shipped from South Korea through Portland and along narrow highways though Idaho and Montana.
Winona La Duke, Speaking About Tar Sands and the Heavy Haul

After a few brief introductory comments, Winona says that "we are these people at this moment in time; we are the one's who are here...........and as you look around you've got the shot to do something great. You've got the shot to keep them from blowing off the top of a mountain, you got the shot to keep them from combusting the planet to oblivion; you've got the shot to keep them from opening another uranium mine, or gold mine for some jewelry that you don't need; shot to take down a dam in a river; and you've got the shot to stop the Tar Sands. And I feel that it's a great spiritual moment where you have the ability to do something great spiritually." Winona says that we must keep up the battle, because the other side has a 50 year plan. "Exxon has a 50 year plan for their Tar Sands and for all of us.....you have to be prepared for a long haul, because these things don't get fixed in 48 minutes when you watch tv. A little character development, a little solution and we're done." "We need to step outside our arena of comfort and do something." La Duke speaks at length about the Alberta Tar Sands, and the plans to transport enormous equipment from South Korea through Portland and along small roads and fragile ecosystems in Idaho and Montana. This has been dubbed the Heavy Haul, and there are numerous groups resisting this invasion: