Tweet
10:16 PM I mostly ignored this all day, because it seemed like sideshow fare, but it’s worth noting for the record that a baby was left at Occupy DC. Of course, this is unacceptable. The man who left it has allegedly been arrested.
Okay, back to growing the movement and hopefully no politician tries to use this to shut down the camp.
9:55 PM Occupy Orange County is moving to a new location after permit expires for site at Civic Center.
7:38 PM Oakland police officers “disciplined” for covering up their name tags during an Occupy Oakland protest last November.
7:30 PM Occupy Bozeman (in Montana). held a Close Guantanamo protest today in front of City Hall. (There’s an Occupy Bozeman?)
6:00 PM Occupy Wall Street’s action at the Nigerian consulate in solidarity with Occupy Nigeria has been underway.
@OWS_Tactical took this photo:
And, @OWS_Tactical tweets a quote from the scene: “You know what this is. It is the struggle of the global 99% against the greedy 1% of the world.”
5:50 PM After Occupy Baltimore calls for a protest to save a woman’s home from foreclosure and one hundred or so people gather, sheriff shows up the day after to carry out the eviction.
5:45 PM Trials for Occupy Wall Street participants swept up in mass arrests could be consolidated
5:40 PM Two New York City Council members who have been supportive of Occupy Wall Street—Jumaane Williams and Ydanis Rodriguez—visit barricade-free Zuccotti Park
5:30 PM Protester from Occupy Orlando, arrested for writing on the sidewalk with chalk, has charges dropped and is released. He was arrested last week.
2:50 PM Occupy Chicago to protest outside event where President Obama will be speaking tonight
2:49 PM Americans becoming more and more concerned with the tension between rich and poor, survey shows
2:48 PM FDL member popyeye99 has a post on the Occupy the Midwest Conference
2:46 PM Getting a late start today as I was covering the tenth anniversary Guantanamo plus planning out my next tour of occupations in some region of the United States.
Original Post
"Close Guantanamo" demonstration in Washington, DC (Photo: RT America)
A number of Occupy groups (but not necessarily all of them) are getting involved in protests today to mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison. Occupy DC has joined in solidarity with groups in Washington, DC, who organized to create a “human chain” today.
As detailed on the website, NoGitmos.org, Amnesty International USA had people sign up to form the chain from Pennsylvania Avenue (White House) all the way to Capitol Hill. The action, that was to begin at noon today, called “for more than 2,000 demonstrators in orange jumpsuits, representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram, and secret prisons.”
There are possibly a thousand people out demonstrating in DC. Many are also speaking out against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), just signed by President Obama, which makes it nearly impossible to transfer Guantanamo detainees to their home countries.
[2:38 PM ET - UPDATE] Here is Center for Constitutional Rights executive director Vince Warren at the action.
CCR has put up a post from an attorney who is visiting his client at Guantanamo today. It is up at my FDL.
At 3 pm ET, Occupy Wall Street will be out in Times Square for an action to call for the closing of Guantanamo, to protest the NDAA and to show solidarity with Nigerians that are on strike.
Below is a live stream of the action that is unfolding in DC right now (via @Korgasm_):
Firedoglake’s premier live blog on Occupy Wall Street & all things “Occupy” continues. All times are EST. Updates will appear at the top of the post. Email kevin.gosztola@firedoglake.com with any news tips, questions or updates.
7 Comments
Anyone see this article about DHS monitoring sites that blog about security issues? Of course our little corner of the internets would be too tiny to mention in the article, does anyone seriously believe that we aren’t being monitored? Wired and Wikileaks are on on the list of monitored sites, and we know Kevin is an accomplished Wikileaks blogger who has written extensively on issues covered by Wired. Just sayin’.
I posted a link to that Privacy Compliance Review several days ago (maybe even a week ago).
It is standard social media practice for businesses, especially large corporations, to monitor their name and the response to their postings on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media. There are consultants making adequate salaries telling them how to go about doing it and training the employees who are to do in how to use online tools to do it.
It stands to reason that government agencies in general, and DHS in particular, would also be doing this sort of monitoring of public information.
No doubt we are being monitored as well as sites that cheer on the security industrial complex. How that data is used depends on the particular needs of various departments and units within the monitoring organization.
It’s no different than the many newspaper clipping services that businesses use that have existed for almost a hundred years. And it was clipping services that the FBI used to compile files on protesters during the 1960s. Those formed the basis for who got personally monitored by the FBI.
BTW, the Privacy Compliance Review is a publicly available document that DHS must prepare in order to satisfy the public oversight concerns in the law that created it.
Yep, it’s how the DHS uses the information it gleans that concerns me, not just that they monitor web media. They would be dumb *not* to monitor, frankly. That said, whaddya think the chances are that the information DHS collects is used for the greater good? I doubt it is well used.
That is *exactly* my fear. Note that DHS is doing this work now, not FBI. So, I think the evidence is strong enough to suggest that DHS has taken over some of the FBI’s responsibility for spying on the left. Perhaps this is duplicative, but for crying out loud, I hope the government isn’t paying twice to write up their files on Vegan Anarchists for Peace or whatever.
You can’t go wrong by assuming duplication. Turf is not easily ceded in any bureaucratic battles. Logic would dictate independent contributions to a central repository, but logic is not often seen in the relations between agencies in DC.
DHS Privacy Compliance Review: Appendix A “Social Media Web Sites Monitored by the NOC”
They are for the most part obvious choices.