Bay of Rage, Anti-cut 2

from BayofRage:

//Where: Starts at intersection of Broadway & Telegraph, Oakland//
//When: June 17, 3:00 pm//

This is the second in a series of counterausterity marches and events we have planned for the summer, in order to begin assembling an anticapitalist force capable of combating the current age of budget cuts and economic violence.  This second event is a disruption—a mobile blockade—meant to interrupt, temporarily, the business as usual which economic crisis ever more desperately imposes as the public face of private wealth. For every library and school closure, ten ATMs spring up overnight, circulating ever more swiftly the wealth, looted via predatory lending and home foreclosures. This is not news. Just as globally the US seeks to prop up brutal plutocracies and autocrats in order to maintain its grip on oil reserves and military outposts in the face of popular revolts, so, too, in Oakland we daily confront mechanisms meant to insure our passivity in the face of dispossession: pernicious sit-lie laws, skyrocketing tuition, mounting layoffs and rising unemployment. The city itself is a bank, a dazzling accumulation of wealth, increasingly withdrawn from our lives and stashed in broad daylight, policed with public funds for the enrichment of a few. Join us in jamming, temporarily, these circuits of dispossession.

Mehserle to be Released Sunday

OAKLAND, California – Johannes Mehserle, the police officer who murdered Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART station on January 1st 2009, will be released from jail this Sunday, June 12th. Mehserle has served a little over a year of time in prison for shooting Grant in the back while he lay face down on the platform floor. Videos of the murder were spread quickly over the internet and on the news shortly after the shooting, clearly depicting Grant unarmed and Mehserle standing over him firing his sidearm.

Mehserle was arrested only after a great deal of protest (and arrests) in Oakland. He was placed on trial in June of last year, where several discrepancies took place in his favor, calling into question the legitimacy of trial. Further, this was the first time that Mehserle showed any remorse of the murder; he had never so much as contacted Grant’s family to apologize. On July 8th, 2010, Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, sparking fury and protests in the Oakland community, leading to further arrests of protestors. He was sentenced in November, and was given 2 years with the possibility for an early release.

UPDATE: It appears Mehserle is being released on Monday, not Sunday. HOWEVER, it appears the scheduled protests for Sunday are still in effect for Sunday, in Oakland.

Two protests will follow his release on Sunday:

• 3:00pm at the Fruitvale BART station
• 5:30pm at Broadway and 14th (downtown)

More than 150,000 Gather in Athens Against Austerity

from FromTheGreekStreets:

A crowd whose size is difficult to even estimate gathered in central Athens to protest against the crisis and the Memorandum tonight. The call to a pan-european call of action saw more than 100,000 (some estimates give much higher numbers) flooding Syntagma square and many central nearby avenues. In contrast to previous gatherings, police presence was much higher, with fencing erected around the parliament building and double, or triple rows of riot police around it.

The city is now building up for the General Strike of June 15th, which is also the next date of action announced at Syntagma square. Both mobilisations are aimed against the new agreement between the government and the troika (IMF/EU/ECB) which is planned to be voted at parliament on the morning of the 15th. The general assembly of Syntagma square has already called for a blocking of the parliament from the night of the 14th. In addition to the fencing installed around the parliament (see below), a police water canon has also appeared nearby.

Similar demonstrations took place in Thessaloniki, Patras, Heraklion, Larisa, Volos and many other Greek cities. In the Cretan city of Chania, fascists bearing arms appeared in the gathering, in a failed attempt to provoke the gathered crowd.