On March 9 The New York Times ran an obituary of Rufina Amaya who died at 64 in El Salvador of a stroke the previous Tuesday. We should all remember the ordeal experienced by Ms. Amaya at the hands of troops specifically trained by U.S. Special Forces. read more »

Mar. 22, 2005 The city files a lawsuit against Time’s Up!, a NYC environmental organization, for allegedly participating in, and promoting, an illegal parade by advertising Critical Mass rides in fliers. read more »

On January 6 she went to Lawrence General Hospital complaining of stomach pain; later that day she delivered a 20-ounce baby girl. The premature baby – named Ashley by Abreu – was taken to Tufts-New England Medical Center where she died on January 10. Urine tests revealed Cytotec in the baby’s system. read more »

LeBor covers three genocides. Rwanda (1994) counted 800,000 persons killed in three months; Srebrenica, Bosnia (1995), counted some 6,000 Bosnian Muslims massacred by Bosnian Serbs; Darfur, Sudan (2003-present), estimated at 200,000 dead and 2 million villagers displaced. read more »

The vast bulk of the U.S. media is in the habit of defining events around the world largely in terms of what’s good for the U.S. government – through the eyes of top officials in Washington. read more »

1998: The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) notes that there are 2,397 surveillance cameras in Manhattan alone. read more »

In late January 2000, more than 600 heavily armed police descended on the picketing dockworkers with racist threats and physical intimidation. read more »

Steve Lambert challenged the appropriation of public space by corporate advertisers in his latest piece, “Light Criticism,” by pasting cardboard stencils over video advertising monitors at subway entrances. The stencil, illuminated by the light from the monitors, read, “NYC’s True Graffiti Problem.” The video documentation of this project garnered more than 100,000 hits in the first week. This piece is reminiscent of Paper Tiger Television’s use of cellophane with anti-advertising messages placed over a television screen in its 1985 broadcast from the Whitney Museum. read more »

On April 4, 1914, a mass rally of the Conference of the Unemployed took place at Union Square. Between 6,000 and 7,000 unemployed men and women, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members and anarchists demonstrated on this day in the name of food, shelter and work. Throughout the square, black flags, inscribed with statements such as “Hunger” and “Bread or Revolution,” were held high and the mood was angry and militant. read more »

Despite efforts to mask its spying activity, the city has not just been videotaping demonstrators, but has also placed infiltrators in groups around the world in advance of the 2004 Republican National Convention, leaked documents show. read more »

Like the Giuliani-era’s infamous broken window policy of arresting on the notion that minor infractions such as public drinking or setting off fireworks were gateway crimes to general mayhem, the NYPD deploys maximum force against the smallest demonstrations to keep the larger public in check. The police thinking is that if a minor unauthorized protest were allowed to take the streets, then the door would be opened to mass dissent. The only demonstration allowed is the cattle-pen variety that isolates the protest virus from the body politic. read more »

Just weeks later, in October, Ricci disappeared while on trial for racketeering with two other ILA officers. Ricci was acquitted but it did him little good. His bullet-ridden body was found in November 2005 after a customer at a New Jersey diner complained about a “foul odor and a mass of flies swarming around the trunk of a car” in the parking lot. read more »

One result of the riots was Muslim women became a political football. The incessant anti-Muslim rhetoric espoused by politicians and the media was masked as supposed concern for the protection of Muslim women. Politicians suddenly became feminists — talking of “our women” and “their women” in a campaign to liberate Muslim women from what was perceived as a misogynist religion. read more »

In what is considered an “offensive move” in the bicycle community, the Five Borough Bicycle Club (5BBC) and several other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit March 27 in federal court, asking the judge to stop NYPD’s new regulation. “Suing city government is not one of the ordinary roles of the 5BBC, but organizing group bicycle rides is,” the group disclosed on its website. “The NYPD’s parade rules essentially outlaw large bike rides, under the dubious claim that bicycle rides are a danger to public health and safety.” read more »

“How much of our freedom must we give up for safety?” asked Edwin Rogriguez, a junior at CSSJ. “I am tired of being searched illegally and being treated like a criminal just to get an education. It’s time for student rights to be known and respected. We need to restore the balance between safety and freedom.” read more »

Standing in front of the steps at the south end of Union Square, Geoffrey Blank helped launch an experiment in free speech in May 2003. Equipped with several large, hand-painted banners and a handheld, 10-watt battery-powered megaphone, Blank and a handful of other members of the No Police State Coalition would launch into passionate monologues on the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, “9-11 Truth” and much, much more. It was unfettered free speech, warts and all, unflinchingly delivered in three-hour blocks, three times a week. “We not only wanted to educate the public,” Blank said, “we wanted to engage them to get up and speak and debate. … It wasn’t like blogging in your living room.” read more »

The Longshore Workers Coalition (LWC) is an upstart faction vying for union democracy in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA.) read more »

In an “Open Letter to Ronald McDonald” published on wiretap.org, Jordan Buckley, a member of the Student-Farmworker Alliance affiliate in Austin, Texas, observed that, “It is often more strategic to organize for social change at the point of consumption rather than the point of production.” read more »

Like other directors of the Iranian New Wave, Jafar Panahi uses techniques associated with both documentary and neorealist traditions to give his politically urgent films a low-key, but deadly serious immediacy. read more »

Los Desaparecidos is an unforgettable exhibition. It is also a sad one for audiences here considering the role of the U.S. government in funding and training many of the military dictatorships. read more »

SUN APR 8 11:30am • Free ACTION: ANNUAL PEACESTERS PARADE TO BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW. March and drumming begins at noon, meet at 59th and 5th Ave. Please bring a percussion instrument. March goes down 5th Ave. then back up, 59th St. to 40th St. read more »

“New York City’s coastal location makes it particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and more powerful storm events that will result from unabated warming … Permanent inundation could result, with the collapse of either the Greenland or Antarctic ice shelves, which would lead to a 10- to 20-foot rise in sea level. Such a rise would greatly reconfigure the map of our city, sinking much of lower Manhattan beneath the water.” read more »

SEA OF PEOPLE Noon. Meet at Battery Park for a community walk up both sides of Manhattan Island. Wear blue. read more »

“Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war… Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.… read more »

In regards to your story on protesters blocking military shipments, (“StrykerBlockade Intensifies, Washington State Activists Attempt to Stop Iraq Weapons Shipment at Port of Tacoma”—March 15) the military chose Tacoma because Olympia simply wasn’t available (schedule conflict). It was done at night to avoid the horrendous traffic that is often found in the Tacoma area. The strykers simply don’t stop very quickly, and they wanted to avoid any possible collisions or other obstacles. There is plenty of support for this war and our troops. –NOT RETARDED read more »