Riot police responded to the scene of a Chalk Walk celebration in Los Angeles last evening and forcibly disbursed a crowd. Unfortunately, some in the crowd responded to the police’s violence in kind, escalating the situation, and motivating the better armed aggressors to deploy rubber bullets and batons on civilians. Seventeen people were arrested in total, nine for chalking (including a juvenile), two for failure to disperse, one for receiving stolen property, two for simply resisting arrest, and three for assaulting a police officer. Two of those charged with assaulting the police also received the subtitle ‘with a deadly weapon’. One officer was reportedly given a minor concussion by a bottle smashing against her helmet.
The chalking protest itself was a response to the arrest of twelve Occupy LA chalkers over the past four weeks in the United States’ second largest city. Organizers of the Chalk Walk scheduled the event to coincide with the annual Art Walk occurring simultaneously nearby. Free chalk was made available to those who cared to participate.
Journalist Nancy Casanova tweeted this picture of the night’s violence kicking off. (more…)
Despite appeals court decisions that make it clear that schools must allow counter-recruiters in if they allow military recruiters, the Keene school board decided not to allow veterans to set up a counter-recruiting table at Keene high school. Their excuse is that representatives from colleges and workplaces are able to also reach out to students and therefore they are exposed to other post-high-school options. Of course, none of those other people will be providing information specifically counter to the lies and misinformation given by the recruiters. Also, it’s worth noting that the recruiters are there several times per year, and other viewpoints either not allowed at all, or barely. See the entire interaction between me and the school board from the clip below, courtesy of Cheshire TV. After the video, you’ll find the Keene Sentinel’s report on the meeting which focused primarily on the counter-recruiting situation. Thanks to Sentinel reporter Kaitlin Mulhere for the excellent article.
The next step in this saga will be taken by NH Peace Action, as they will be reaching out to the NHCLU regarding suing the school board to allow veterans to be on-campus as often as the military recruiters. Stay tuned here for the latest.
It was in the cards that Uncle Sam would be delivering a Ballistic Engineered Armoured Response Counter Attack Truck for dual use to the communities of Berkeley and Albany, California. The respective city committees had earlier in the year approved the measure at the behest of the police. But since Berkeley Copwatch released the details in May, city officials have distanced themselves from the expensive war machine, and on July 4th, the news broke that the cities would be rejecting the Bearcat, with Berkeley mayor Tom Bates and Albany mayor Farid Javandel signing cancellation statements.
The news is a major victory against police militarization in those communities, and comes months after Keene city officials’ controversial decision to accept a free Bearcat. The UC Berkeley Bearcat was to have been purchased under the (Orwellian) Urban Area Security Initiative. The UASI is a Department of Homeland Security program that has its own creepy blog and funnels money from federal tax dollars to fund the domestic military industrial complex. Keene is certainly not the high density urban environment Berkeley is, and it is encouraging that such a metropolis was able to resist the introduction of offensive weaponry into their neighborhoods.
Reason magazine’s Garrett Quinn has filed this excellent report on his first visit to the Porcupine Freedom Festival:
Every summer since 2004, hundreds of people belonging to and interested in the Free State Project, an effort to move 20,000 libertarians to New Hampshire, gather at a remote campground in the northern part of the state for a weeklong event called the Porcupine Freedom Festival. The outdoorsy extravaganza, more commonly known as PorcFest, is one of the biggest libertarian gatherings in the entire country.
The libertarian stereotype of the nerdy, balding, middle-aged white guy goes out the window at PorcFest. The attendees are so diverse, one wonders how organizers managed to get everybody together in the same place without burning the forest down in a fit of rage. If you want to see what happens when you bring together libertarian politicos, voluntaryists, and off-the-grid family farmers that love raw milk for a week to celebrate one of the more quixotic elements of the libertarian movement, then you have to go to PorcFest. (more…)
Eddie Free goes on a rant in front of the White House on Independence Day eve. Great video. The police made the right choice in leaving him alone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WKWAYWzYpE
It was in the cards that Uncle Sam would be delivering a Ballistic Engineered Armoured Response Counter Attack Truck for dual use to the communities of Berkeley and Albany, California. The respective city committees had earlier in the year approved the measure at the behest of the police. But since Berkeley Copwatch 
Reason magazine’s Garrett Quinn has 
