Quebec Rally Against Police Violence Highlights Assault on Indigenous Women, Ends in Police Violence

from Press TV

Around 500 people took to the streets in the city of Montreal to participate in the 17th annual anti-police brutality march.

Police used horses, pepper-spray and kettling tactics to disperse the protesters. Early reports also said that scores of people were arrested.

“Before the march even began, they just ran to the crowd for no apparent reason and then since there was chaos they took that a reason to just charge into us with their batons and shields,” one of the demonstrators told Press TV.

Meanwhile, many believe that the worst acts of violence during marches in Montreal are committed by the police forces and not the demonstrators.

“They just brutalize us every time for nothing, we’re just walking the streets, they just start pushing us and everything else,” said another protester.

Canadian police is also accused of raping and abusing aboriginal women.

New York Assembly Votes to Ban Fracking for Two More Years

By Karen DeWitt : NYS Public Radio/WXXI

Machine used for hydrofracking (NYS Department of Environmental Conservation)

The New York State Assembly has approved, by a 95 to 40 vote, a two-year moratorium on hydrofracking in New York. While it’s unlikely to be passed in the Senate, the action reflects state lawmakers’ growing worries about potential health impacts from the natural gas drilling process. 

On Forming Martial Arts Societies

by autonomouse

We need martial artists in radical movements. I’m pretty sure everyone can attest to this, for community self defense and for the need to discipline radicals on a social as well as individual level. It is a shame so many radicals as well as many anarchists don’t know the basics of body structure or self defense. So this piece is aimed at a proposal.

Anarchists Claim Responsibility for Seattle House Fire

By Michael Harthorne / Komonews.com

The Seattle Fire Department responds to a fire at an under-construction townhouse Feb. 26 in the Central District.

SEATTLE — Local anarchists have claimed responsibility for the fire that destroyed an under-construction townhouse last week in the Central District, stating they attacked the building in order to reject the status quo and shed the “subjugated subjectivity” forced on them by the government.

Fun: Guerrilla Surveillance Camera Destruction Hits the U.S.

It started in Germany with masked anarchists dismantling CCTV cameras, now Camover is a global game

The spoils of a Camover mission in the Puget Sound region (Credit: AnarchistNews.org)

By Natasha Lennard / Salon.com

It started in Berlin: Anarchists, donning black bloc attire, hit the streets at night in pairs, small groups or alone to smash and dismantle the CCTV surveillance cameras adorning the city streets.

They posted videos and photos of their exploits online and called the guerrilla project Camover. The German collective gave a playful interview to Vice U.K. in which they explained that they are “a diverse group of people: Shoplifters eluding capitalism who don’t want to be monitored, passengers who don’t want to followed step by step and anarchists fighting everything that wants to control us.”

Demonstrations Disrupt Snowbowl 75th Anniversary Parties

BY MITCH KULLOS —

Crowds gathered in Heritage Square at 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, not to celebrate the Dew Downtown event, but rather to protest and bring awareness to the various forms of environmental negligence levied against the Arizona Snowbowl. The ski resort has been celebrating their 75^th anniversary for the past week at various bars and restaurants in downtown Flagstaff; these events were disrupted at nearly every venue by passionate protestors demonstrating their views on Snowbowl’s celebration.

Klee Benally leads the drum circle during an Arizona Snowbowl protest, the protest took place at heritage square in downtown Flagstaff on Saturday. Arizona Snowbowl has been using reclaimed water to blow snow onto the mountain which started in December of last year. (Photo by Jeff Bucher)

With such frequent protests, protesters are assumed to have been working with or inspired by the organization Idle No More. Often, the protestors carried signs and banners voicing their cause to remove Snowbowl from the San Francisco peaks, which is considered to be sacred by local indigenous tribes. This debate was recently reignited by the use of 100 percent wastewater recycled snow on the mountain. The coordinated protest events began with a downtown street march on Monday and culminated with a flash mob protest in Heritage Square on Feb. 9.

Members of the protest gave statements of why they were participating, their purpose and evidence supporting their cause.

Video: Black Mesa Dine & Appalachians Confront Peabody Coal in St. Louis, MO

An unprecedented coalition of Navajo (Dineh) residents of Black Mesa, AZ, Appalachian residents, St. Louis residents, military veterans and labor unions brought the fight for our future to Peabody’s HQ today. Nearly 100 of us had a raucous rally opened with a prayer by Black Mesa native Don Yellowman, followed by speeches demanding Peabody stop destabilizing the climate, forcing the Dineh off their land, and cheating workers out of their retirement benefits. Peabody representatives promised to accept a letter from Fern Benally and Don Yellowman, the Navajo residents of Black Mesa, but they broke their promise and called the police instead.

The Return of the Anti-Roads Protesters!

Susanna Rustin / the Guardian

Can today’s eco-warriors recapture the ferocious energy of the 1990s anti-roads protests? As a huge road-building programme gears up, a new wave of activists are taking up the fight.

Stop the cuts … the ‘Combe Haven Defenders’ set up camp in the treetops to protest against a new link road between Bexhill and Hastings that will carve through countryside. Photograph: David Levene

It’s not yet 4pm but the sun is setting at Combe Haven. As it sinks below the winter landscape, its last rays illuminate the scene unfolding in the trees overhead.

Half a dozen young men and women, their faces mostly concealed by scarves, are perched on the branches of a big, old oak tree, securing the ropes that support a wooden platform they have suspended between it and another oak. They are discussing how best to hang an enormous net that has been donated by the fishing fleet at Hastings a few miles away. This will make a giant hammock, intended for those not comfortable in tree houses high above the ground.

Indiana (not her real name), a veteran of roads protests dating back to the early 1990s, says she may sleep in the net tonight. Her grandfather was a fisherman at Hastings and it was she who went to ask for it. Wrapped around the trunks and branches, the braided polypropylene can also impede the chainsaws, causing them to snag.

In a clearing on the other side of a waist-high barricade made of branches, a dozen men in hard hats and high-visibility jackets look on. They are specialist contractors working as high-court enforcement officers, figuring out how they will forcibly evict the protesters in the days or weeks ahead. Another dozen or so activists and legal observers are on the ground, chatting and making tea on a fire. As they watch their best climber clambering 50ft up, they explain how the platform has been positioned high in the crown of the tree so they cannot be approached and plucked out from above.

This is what protesters have dubbed the second battle of Hastings.

Idle No More Hits Arizona as Part of Snowbowl Protest

by Anne Minard / Indian Country

The international Idle No More movement hit Arizona this week, in a freshly charged protest at Flagstaff City Hall over snowmaking with treated effluent at Arizona Snowbowl, a ski resort on the sacred San Francisco Peaks.

Flagstaff residents are accustomed to seeing Snowbowl protesters on the City Hall lawn – the most recent demonstration was just before Christmas, to coincide with Snowbowl’s opening day. But this week’s gathering on January 8 carried a bit more energy. For starters, the activists didn’t just hold signs; they opened the day in a circle of prayer and song. And the event drew a fuller-than-usual crowd.

Happy Birthday Panagioti, Stay Wild, Stay Weird

This Photoshopped image of Panagioti, which first appeared in this Lake Worth Wingnut article is, despite being doctored, a pretty decent metaphor for the inner fire of this biocentric patriot. You can imagine that he used the sword in his hand to do battle against the imperialist flag behind him. You could also imagine that his pants became tattered in a heated orgy with a badger and a mountain lion.

by Russ McSpadden

If industrial civilization were to collapse any time soon–and its looking like it could happen any day now–it’d be in no small part due to the rather outrageous and tireless misadventures of a little known biocentric biped called Panagioti. 

Though he has no formal education past 10th grade — “diploma-free and proud” as he’d say — you’d be hard pressed to find a smarter and more politically influential animal amongst the more radical environmental milieu, especially in the South. He’s also a real sweetheart, a soon-to-be-father, my best friend and all around nice guy and superhero.

And over the years I’ve had the honor of  witnessing,  participating, and hearing stories of some of the nobler, crazier, illegaler, stupider, and just plane unbelievable acts of resistance and folly he’s helped organize. And, since its his birthday today, I thought I might embarrass him a little and honor him in some small way by sharing a smattering of those stories. I invite others (and especially family) to add their own accounts in the comments section, should they be inclined.