thecandidcity:

seaview towers. rockaways. on Flickr.

The first woman we met on the stairwell also invited us into her apartment. This is the view from her window, overlooking the mirror image building that the other team was in across the way. Seaview Towers was once home to summer bungalows, which totally reminded me of the movie “Radio Days,” which takes place in the area in the ’50s.

As we went through the building, we encountered so many people from all walks of life. Many were not home, but those who answered were thankful that someone came to check up on them. Some needed more food, water, diapers, milk, and other necessities. On one floor, we encountered a Spanish-speaking woman whose young daughter, translated for us. The woman was telling us that one of the neighbors on her floor was going around the floor at night with a knife. That woman wouldn’t open the door for us and we were concerned about her mental health (we also made sure to alert the super as well as the people back at the clinic). The young girl helped us as we surveyed the rest of the floor & I asked her if she liked helping out. She told me that she really wants to help people when she grows up.

Other doors we knocked on also got responses. One woman we checked on was running very low on her prescription for high blood pressure & we took her information down. Another woman had a 24 day old baby and needed her medications refilled. They were running low on formula (since she was on meds, she was not breastfeeding) and other necessities. Her 18 year-old son was able bodied and we told him of places he good go to get supplies for his family.

We didn’t get to all the floors because we didn’t have enough time, but we helped as many people as we could. It was pretty amazing, and it was great knowing that people were extremely appreciative.

angetran:

What we’ve been up to

OccupySandy volunteers feeding FEMA workers in New York, via @TshirtToby 

FEMA shut down two days ago “due to bad weather”, during which time Occupy Sandy and the Red Cross continued to provide aid to hurricane victims:

But this week FEMA seemingly added a special condition to its services: The agency will only help as long as it’s not raining, snowy or too windy. As the nor’easter brought snowflakes to an area where thousands are still without electricity or homes in freezing temperatures, FEMA shut down its operations “due to bad weather.”

After being questioned on the reasons behind the closed doors, Fugate told reporters that services needed to be postponed during the storm and would resume when the weather improves.

[…]

FEMA buses vanished on Wednesday, taking away some New Yorkers’ only source of warmth and electricity. Trucks were removed from Staten Island and tents were taken down throughout the city.

FEMA has since re-opened in NYC, presumably because the sun had come out and the birds started singing.

mollycrabapple:

A poster for the striking, recently criminalized students in Quebec.

Read about Quebec’s Law 78, deliberately designed to crush the student protests, here

Please share, download, print, wheatepaste, poster, and plaster this art everywhere.  Hope it’s useful to you.  HIGH RES HERE

3liza:

i am definitely not advising that you misuse _free USPS materials (it is a crime)

[full size download]

Accurate depiction of Oakland’s Finest.

(Source: 3liza, via mollycrabapple)

collaterlysisters:

occupyallstreets:

Judge Threatens OPD Sanctions For ‘Military-Type Response’ To Occupy Protests

Yesterday, a federal judge ordered Oakland’s police department to submit a plan to address numerous unresolved complaints regarding their handling of the Occupy Oakland protests, warning that failure to comply within a week could lead to sanctions. District Judge Thelton Henderson’s mandate comes just a day after the release of a report by an outside monitor that concluded Oakland police used “an overwhelming military-type response” to Occupy’s demonstrations — the first official report to confirm Occupy Oakland’s struggles against police brutality.

The Oakland police department has received more than 1,000 misconduct complaints since the Occupy protests began, most have which have become backlogged. The department has been under court-ordered external monitoring and review since 2003, after four officers were accused of planting evidence, fabricating police reports and using excessive force. Henderson’s mandate sets strict deadlines for the department to clean up its act while continuing to comply with the reforms that stemmed from that 2003 case:

HENDERSON: It would be problematic enough if, as seems inevitable, [Oakland police’s] compliance levels were to backslide as a result of their failure to address the Occupy Oakland complaints in a timely fashion. Such failures would be further indication that, despite the changed leadership at the City of Oakland and its police department, [Oakland police] might still lack the will, capacity, or both to complete the reforms to which they so long ago agreed. The court will consider appropriate sanctions, including the imposition of daily or weekly monetary sanctions, until compliance is achieved.

On October 25, police attempted to subdue protesters with heavy-handed tactics such as rubber bullets, flash grenades, and smoke bombs — and ended up injuring an Iraq War veteran in the process. The Oakland police department later rejected an ACLU public records request to investigate the October events, and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s legal adviser resigned in outrage over the city’s treatment of the Occupy protesters.

Source

quelle fucking surprise

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/david-graeber-new-police-strategy-in-new-york-sexual-assault-against-peaceful-protestors.html

A few weeks ago I was with a few companions from Occupy Wall Street in Union Square when an old friend — I’ll call her Eileen — passed through, her hand in a cast.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” she held it up. “I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast.”

“Again?” someone said.

We had all been hearing stories like this. In fact, there had been continual reports of police officers groping women during the nightly evictions from Union Square itself over the previous two weeks.

“Yeah so I screamed at the guy, I said, ‘you grabbed my boob! what are you, some kind of fucking pervert?’ So they took me behind the lines and broke my wrists.”

Actually, she quickly clarified, only one wrist was literally broken. She proceeded to launch into a careful, well-nigh clinical blow-by-blow description of what had happened. An experienced activist, she knew to go limp when police seized her, and how to do nothing that could possibly be described as resisting arrest. Police dragged her, partly by the hair, behind their lines and threw her to the ground, periodically shouting “stop resisting!” as she shouted back “I’m not resisting!” At one point though, she said, she did tell them her glasses had fallen to the sidewalk next to her, and announced she was going to reach over to retrieve them. That apparently gave them all the excuse they needed. One seized her right arm and bent her wrist backwards in what she said appeared to be some kind of marshal-arts move, leaving it not broken, but seriously damaged. “I don’t know exactly what they did to my left wrist—at that point I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs in pain. But they broke it. After that they put me in plastic cuffs, as tightly as they possibly could, and wouldn’t loosen them for at least an hour no matter how loud I screamed or how much the other prisoners begged them to help me. For a while everyone in the arrest van was chanting ‘take them off, take them off’ but they just ignored them…”

An extremely disturbing report on the emerging police tactic of employing brutal sexual assault against Occupation protesters as an intimidation and provocation tactic.  Police have engaged in rape and sexual assault against civilians since time immemorial, but the use of such tactics against Occupy may finally serve to bring some light to the intrinsic evil, exploitation, and misogyny of the United States law enforcement industrial complex.

Read the full article here.

Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department)

Anon Medics & friend on MayDay.  Full size here. Via this video.

“How do I become a street medic?”

Since opening an ask box on this site, the main issue people have seemed interested in is how they can become a street medic. Our apologies for not answering sooner and on a more individual basis, but the issue seemed important enough to warrant a larger post. Following is some information you may find useful to keep in mind when considering becoming a street medic:

1. If you have not been to a protest involving an adversarial police force before, it is advisable that you do so before trying to act as a street medic. Participating in a protest will give you valuable experience in terms of predicting the actions of both protesters and police.

2. Once you feel ready to show up as a medic, it’s a good idea to get some training. Street medics vary widely in terms of skills and experience, ranging from basic first aid practitioners to military- or professionally-trained medics. First aid certification by itself will give you most of the skills you will ever need to use as a street medic, however, so unless you have outside interest in further training to become an EMT or wilderness rescuer it usually isn’t necessary to spend time and money you may not have. More skills are always helpful, however, so use your better judgement.

3. Street medics often use an additional set of skills not taught in first aid courses, such as teargas decontamination and crowd assessment. Search social networking or activist sites in your area to see when street medic training sessions are being held, then do your best to attend. Bring food if you really want to make a good impression.

4. Assemble your gear, and keep it organized and ready to go. You don’t know when you’re going to hear about a protest action (especially with Occupy, which tends to have events spring up in moments), and the last thing you want is to have to scramble around looking for your first aid kit when you hear the police are launching gas at a march.

5. Do your research. As a medic it will be your job to keep an eye on the police, and being able to accurately determine the weaponry they’re carrying (and thereby the effects you should be prepared to treat) should be one of your most solid skills. This will involve looking at a lot of “less-lethal” manufacturing sites, as well as watching potentially troubling footage of protest injuries. We apologize in advance.

6. We have a street medic primer with a rough equipment list available here, though there are many other resources available online to help prepare medics for protest action. The best thing you can do (even better than reading Tumblr!) is to get in touch with your local street medic group and ask them what it would take to join up. They will be able to give you much deeper level of instruction than we will ever be able to accomplish online.

Be safe!