This morning four people Nacogdoches, Texas, “locked themselves to heavy machinery used along the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline route, according to the Tar Sands Blockade group. The action interrupted and halted ongoing pipeline construction until police pepper sprayed the blockaders and were able to arrest and remove them in flexicuffs. The action was planned [...]

(update below) The screams pierced the air of a scene already filled with chaos and disorder fomented by squads of men in blue. The female protesters shrieking were on a street near Union Square in New York City and were part of Occupy Wall Street, which had just taken over Zuccotti Park one week ago. [...]

Reports on the incident involving the pepper spraying of UC Davis students at an Occupy protest on November 18 last year have finally been made public. They make clear that what the police did “should and could have been prevented.” The reports come from a task force led by Cruz Reynoso, a civil rights lawyer [...]

In what appears to be his first television interview on the subject, Kamran Loghman, the developer of weapons-grade pepper spray and the policy for its use by US police departments, appeared on Democracy Now! to condemn how police forces have been using pepper spray on peaceful protesters in the country. He said he was “shocked” [...]

(update below) Lt. Pike, the cop who pepper sprayed UC Davis students protesting against economic inequality and injustice in America, is now the poster boy for authoritarianism against citizens rising up to change the world. Lt. Pike appears at the Flint, Michigan sit-down strike. There he tries to stop workers from forming a major labor [...]

In the freezing cold rain and under threat of an immediate crackdown by the Oakland Police Department to remove them if they tried to re-establish their occupation, Occupy Oakland setup a new camp site at 19th & Telegraph. Occupy Oakland organizers reported regaining “momentum” as a number of actions with “visible union support” took place [...]