At just about noon today, a Hillsborough County superior court jury returned from approximately an hour of deliberation with a guilty finding against three Occupy New Hampshire activists who did not voluntarily retrieve a citation and were removed via arrest from the temporary intentional community established in Veterans’ Park in Manchester’s downtown. The three were sentenced to ten days of incarceration at the infamous Valley Street jail, which is deferred on the condition that each completes 90 hours of community service and observes one year of good behavior. One occupier who was cited for curfew violation, but did not receive misdemeanor trespassing charges during the eviction responded,
Dislike, but unshocked. We were essentially asking the jury to find you not guilty on constitutional grounds. They are not constitutional law experts, this is an issue for the supreme court, and hopefully we get to challenge it there… (more…)
Yesterday I delivered a presentation entitled CopBlock: Policing the Police with Alternative Media during the first block of panels kicking off the sixth annual All Power to the Imagination conference at New College of Florida. There may be video emerging soon, for now you can tune in to the audio on the Sound Cloud:
It has been over three years since the face-fracturing beating of Christopher Micklovich by four off duty Manchester police officers, and today it was announced that there was ultimately an admission of culpability from the city. For $200,000, a federal civil rights lawsuit was withdrawn by the plaintiff, with city risk manager Harry Ntapalis revealing that the case was settled privately and was paid off in May of last year. The Union Leader has the story.
The Attorney General’s distasteful exoneration of the four officers, as well as the killing of James Breton in front of his daughter in May of 2011 was what inspired a police accountability rally at the former MPD station house on June 4 of that year. The demonstration against police violence became a demonstration of petty police violence, as around a dozen cameras were confiscated and eight people were kidnapped for offenses such as chalking, standing near chalk, and not following illegal orders fast enough. The Chalking 8 incident only proved the protesters’ point.
How Micklovich’s search for justice in his case snaked through the law enforcement bureaucracy before being resolved by the city further illustrates how detached from responsibility individuals in law enforcement are. Taxpayers are the source of both police salaries and plaintiff payoffs, yet legal immunity shields those tax recipients who are directly culpable from any restitution obligation.
Today Keene High School’s Students for a Free Tibet chapter stood for hours after noon holding signs and flags in support of the rights of the people of Tibet. The Himalayan region has been occupied by the PRC since 1951, and was more militarized and repressed after an unsuccessful uprising in 1959. March 10 marks the fifty-fourth year since the deflected revolution. Al Jazeera reports that in neighboring Nepal, police have cracked down on Tibetan activists on the eve of the anniversary. On February 13, a Tibetan monk self-immolated at a restaurant in Kathmandu. A sign of the desperation of the people is the widespread practice of self-immolation, with over 100 instances since 2009, resulting in over 40 deaths. Literally around the corner from where today’s gathering was held, a New Hampshire father self-immolated over a custody dispute at the Cheshire Superior Court.
Today’s episode of Derrick J Freeman’s daily five minute newscast Peace News Now was illustrated for video by none other than Free Concord’s Garret Ean. This episode features analysis of the latest military escalations in Korea, and wraps up with news of bitcoin’s continued climb with innovations in its use for the European market. See today’s feature below, North Korea Threatens War.
At just about noon today, a Hillsborough County superior court jury returned from approximately an hour of deliberation with a guilty finding against three Occupy New Hampshire activists who did not voluntarily retrieve a citation and were removed via arrest from the temporary intentional community established in Veterans’ Park in Manchester’s downtown. The three were sentenced to ten days of incarceration at the infamous Valley Street jail, which is deferred on the condition that each completes 90 hours of community service and observes one year of good behavior. One occupier who was cited for curfew violation, but did not receive misdemeanor trespassing charges during the eviction responded,
