On the 20th of January, Untold Carslyle published this photo of an undercover cop that has been seen around most or all of the DC Ferguson protests. Looks like we've just caught another "Missy," the undercover cop who was caught by DC activists in 2013 because she had a big mouth on Twitter.
On the 17th of January, during the MLK holiday weekend, cops in DC held what was effectively a counterprotest against DC Ferguson and the rest of the new civil rights movement. Their "sea of blue" march featured some participants looking like motorcycle gang members, and speakers advocating an "us vs them" approach to policing.
The 15th of January is Martin Luther King's actual birthday. On that day in 2015, DC Ferguson marched into AM rush hour traffic and shut it down for many blocks in all directions of the protest. Police redirection of traffic greatly magnified the impact by closing off large sections of streets containing protesters, far beyond the protest itself. Police, security guards, and vigiliantes are still shooting another African-American every 28 hours. DC police are still using jump-outs to intimidate Black youth into submitting to illegal searches.
The 13th of January was a day of action against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline throughout Turtle Island. In Washington DC, Climate First! showed up at the US Department of State late afternoon, after an earlier protest at the White House by 350.org.
At 6:30PM on the 8th of January, WTOP News reported that the Olympic Selection Committee in Denver has chosen Boston, not Washington DC, for the 2024 Olympic bid for the United States. DC is now spared from incoming Mayor Muriel Bowser's proposal to spend $5 Billion on the "Eviction Games," and from the wave of displacement, gentrification, and police brutality they would bring. On the other hand, Boston residents now have a problem and need to prepare for a fight to reject the Games.
On the 7th of January as of 10:30AM, online complaints appeared that the Wal-Mart on Ga Ave had neither shovelled nor salted the sidewalks in front of their store. There was an online complaint from someone who saw an elderly woman nearly slip and fall on the ice. While Wal-Mart gets a pass on this, ordinary DC residents can face fines fines for not clearing sidewalks.
On Wednesday, the 7th of January, the Senate will hold a hearing on the GOP's bill to push through the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The bill is expected to pass and be on Obama's desk by Friday, Jan 9. On Jan 3, Native Americans and their allies protested in front of the White House demanding that Obama veto this bill.
The Unification Church(Rev Moon)-controlled Washington Times is claiming that DC Police have spent $3M because of the DC Ferguson protests. I can say from personal experience that this consists of following DC Ferguson protests through the streets and redirecting traffic to isolate protests. Perhaps police chief Cathy Lanier should think of this as a $3M fine against the DC Police for violating the rights of African-American city residents with jump-out tactics and illegal searches stemming from them.
On the 18th of December, Twitter posts tagged with #dcferguson disappeared from Twitter searches unless "top" was selected instead of "all." Since "top" stories are old, this made it impossible to use Twitter to call protesters to assemble at a short notice time and place. Twitter themselves or right-wing/police hackers could potentially do this. For several days before this, a #dcferguson Twitter search would return large numbers of "falabeats" audio promos, and finally returned a half dozen pages of those posts at some times on Dec 18, burying almost all other posts.
On the 17th of December, hundreds of people, mostly Pakistani-Americans, gathered in Dupont Circle to remember 141 people, mostly young students, killed in the Dec 16 Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar. There was a call for solidarity with this vigil on the DC Ferguson Twitter feed and no march that would have conflicted with it.
On or before the 16th of December, cardboard Christmas ornaments appeared on trees outside the Church of the Pilgrim Presbyterian near Dupont Circle. The ornaments read "Black Lives Matter." This is in contrast to ugly things hung from trees or gates in other places such as Berkeley, where a dummy in an "I Can't breathe" T-shirt was hung in public.
On Dec 16, DC Council staffers walked out claiming solidarity with the protests against police murder in Ferguson, New York, and here in DC, yet refused to sign the DC Ferguson petition against jump-outs. Does this mean the DC Council wants jump-outs to continue, so long as they do not escalate all the way to chokeholds or police shootings?
A new and ugly report has shown up on Twitter that Metro police are checking for warrants when anyone comes up short on their farecard in Anacostia. Not having the money to pay one's way out of Metro is surely not probable cause to believe there is an arrest warrant out for someone, but to these racist cops it makes no difference. I've also received an in-person report that in at least some neighborhoods police have "doubled down" on violence towards African-American young men since the protests began.
On the 13th of December, a march estimated by some at around 50,000 people from Freedom Plaza to the US Capitol protested the recent string of police murders of unarmed young African-American men. The "Hands up, don't shoot" and "I can't breathe" chants were heard often, referring to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in NYC.March organizers got a surprise when activists who had come to DC all the way from Ferguson but not been invited by Al Sharpton's team to speak took over the microphone.
On the 11th of December, I found roads in Rock Creek Park barricaded in preparation for "Deer Removal" or the shooting of deer by USDA "wildlife Services" at about 6:30PM. By 10:30 PM, after a flury of phone calls in an effort to organize a hasty street protest, all the barricades were gone and the killers nowhere to be found.
On the 10th of December, the Washington Post ran a front-page story about the Congressional CIA torture report. Unfortunately, this sort of journalism is the exception, not the rule there.
On the 8th of December, The National Park Service's contract deer shooters showed up the earliest they have yet been seen to kill deer in Rock Creek Park. They claim 300 deer in Rock Creek is too many, even though there are nearly 600,000 people in the surrounding city. Animal rights activists are patrolling the woods to document and when possible disrupt this "cull" of the Rock Creek DeerThe Park Service contracts USDA's "wildlife services" to do the shooting, even though Wildlife Services is notorious for cruelty to animals in other areas.
On the 7th of December, the animal rights group "Direct Action Everywhere" staged a protest in the meat department of a Safeway grocery store in Virginia. Organizers posted this video on Youtube
On the 7th of December, protesters set up a banner and a light show outside the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). They were there because negotiations for the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership are back in town. Protesters are demanding that the still-classified text of TPP drafts-kept secret even from members of Congress expected to vote on it-be released to the public
Despite overwhelming opposition to "fast track" and little movement internationally, Obama still hopes to get final text of the proposed TPP trade deal written this week.
http://youtu.be/cm196HOdSzI?t=1m7s
I happened to be at Politics and Prose for small business Saturday with my 93 year old mother when the president came in with his daughters. She is the grey haired lady (just got a haircut that morning!) behind Sasha's left shoulder. I confess to turning into a complete groupie in the presence of Obama's rockstar good looks and beautiful daughters, and their complete coolness.