"In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event," says the deputy Chief of Police. (Photo: Sergey Teplyakov/vkontakte)

Perhaps Obama’s buddy Rahm should send an attaché to Siberia to take notes:

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: “I’m for clean elections” and “A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin”.

Police refer to the dolls as the opposition’s “new technologies,” examining their details and writing down the text of each placard . . .  Read more about creative measures adopted by activists in Russia.

UPDATE 1/28/12

Photos and more backstory on boingboing.net (Photo: RFE-RL)

Photos and more backstory on boingboing.net, from RIA Novosti.

More: MSNBC News, Radio Free Europe, Independent (UK).

Judge Strips Power from Oakland Police
Decisions must now go through court monitors, as department steps closer to federal takeover”:

“A federal judge has granted significant decision-making powers to the monitors charged with overseeing court-ordered reforms at the Oakland Police Department, a move that brings the department one step closer to a federal takeover.

“In an order issued late Tuesday, Judge Thelton Henderson wrote that he was in ‘disbelief’ that the department had yet to finish the reforms, adding that the department remains ‘woefully behind its peers around the state and nation,’ and that ‘words and promises are not enough.’”

“If the department has not finished implementing the reforms by July, Henderson said he would consider the possibility of receivership proceedings, during which he could decide whether to place the department under federal authority.”

Full Story

Other Oakland News:

• Weekend of Action: #OO Move-In Day and Rise Up Festival, 1/28-29
• Oakland Police Chief Lied to Discredit Occupy Oakland. (Daily Kos 1/14/12)

SFPD Brutality picked up by NBC news

Police Encounter With Occupy Wall Street West Protesters — Alleged Violence

The above MSM coverage is based on citizen journalism of #J20 Occupy Wall Street West in San Francisco such as this:

@pfailblog  SFPD Attacks Innocent Protesters; Officer M. Ali #619 Breaks My Cam

@punkboyinsf  http://www.ustream.tv/occupysf

More from Occupy Wall Street West #J20

• Photo Gallery
• Summary of all that went down
• Play-by-play News

While earlier MSM coverage of OWSWest sensationalized black bloc destruction, it completely ignored the wonder of the black blob (video by jaspergregory)

“. . . a powerful neoliberal economic order dedicated to eliminating all forms of collective or public resistance to the primacy of capital. . . “

Tightening the Screws: Rahm Emanuel passes “Sit Down, Shut Up” in  Chicago

Obama's former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel passes draconian protest-squashing measure in Chicago

Via Truthout

“Critics say the “sit down and shut up” ordinance, as it has been called, seeks to chill protest and civil liberties in Chicago through measures including mandatory $1 million liability insurance for protests, a heightened police presence and more difficulty getting a permit. . . .

“When the ordinance was first introduced, it was said to be only a measure for the NATO/G8 conference to be held in Chicago in May, but it was later revealed that the ordinance change is expected to be permanent.”

Sets a chilling precedent:

Chicago Independent Media Center reports that the ordinance, as it stood the day before the vote, contains the following:

• Virtually every street protest in the downtown would be designated a “large parade,” requiring $1 million liability insurance and for organizers to “agree to reimburse the city for any damage to the public way or to city property arising out of or caused by the parade”;
• Large parade or not, organizers would be required to provide the city with “a description of any recording equipment, sound amplification equipment, banners, signs, or other attention-getting devices to be used in connection with the parade” at least a week in advance of the march;
• Every contingent in the march and the order in which they would appear would have to be registered at least a week in advance with the City; and,
• Demonstration organizers would be required to have one marshal for every 100 participants.
• Under a wholly new section of the municipal code (10-8-334), even gatherings on sidewalks, with no presence in the streets, would now be subject to demands that they get permits, giving the City extraordinary latitude to dictate what union and other pickets occur or get shut down by police action.
• Allow the police Superintendent to deputize FBI, DHS, ATF, and DOJ employees as Chicago police officers.

That last point means Mayor Emanuel can have his own personal army, when the time comes.

Police Tech: “Why do Police douse Protestors with Colored Water?”

Via Foreign Policy

In what appears to be a growing trend around the globe, police are spraying crowds with semi-permanent dye.

As Egypt prepares to mark the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution on Wednesday, with activists mapping out protest routes and the ruling military council partially lifting the country’s emergency laws and releasing prisoners in apparent goodwill gestures, Al-Masry Al-Youm is reporting something rather odd. Anonymous security sources tell the Egyptian newspaper that security forces are planning to use batons, loudspeakers, and “colored chemicals that will stain one’s skin for six months” against “those perceived to be violating the law . . .”

Full story here.

“. . . It is a sign of the uncertainty of the moment—the unresolved play of cultural, economic, and political forces currently unfolding before us . . .“

"Student was suspended 4 distributing #OccupyOakland flyers. Free Speech Rally Mon, Jan 23 @ 8:00 am #OccupyChabot"

Story in Occupied Oakland Tribune: Suspended from Chabot College: a preliminary statement by Joshua Hewitt, reblogged here:

The following is a statement from Joshua Hewitt, aka @DJ_JDot.

I was passing papers out fliers for Occupy Oakland’s January 28 Move In Day action in front of the Chabot Community College radio station in Hayward, CA and a security guard pulled up in a car and asked me if I had permission from the office of student life.

“I have rights,” I said. “The right to free education which I don’t get and the First Amendment. Since I don’t have one of those rights–because I pay too much for not enough education–I’m gonna use my other right.”

He called the other security guard, Nathan Moore, and they took my info. The security car and person drove and walked until I was off campus and told me if I’m back on campus they’ll call the Hayward Police Department to come get me.

And I’m suspended until I get a call to set an appointment up with a dean.

UPDATE: In case you’re wondering, yes, Nathan Moore has been doxed by @VizFoSho.

UPDATE 2: Fellow Chabot-student @BellaEiko has also written about this issue here.

UPDATE 3: Joshua has received a call from the VP of Student Services to setup a meeting. Expect a hasty retreat on the part of Chabot.

Two of a Kind: Obama administration engages in the “first known use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years.”

Via OccupyEverything.org

Jan. 23 Demonstration Called to Defend Washington Dock Workers

Protest Use of U.S. Coast Guard for Union-Busting

PRESS CONFERENCE

WHEN: Monday, January 23, 2012 [1:30 p.m.]

WHERE: 1111 Broadway, Oakland, CA Homeland Security Office

PROTEST DEMONSTRATION AND MARCH

WHEN: Monday, January 23, 2012 [2:30 p.m.]

WHERE: Federal Building 1301 Clay St., Oakland, CA

On Monday, January 23, the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee and the Committee to Defend the ILWU will demonstrate to protest the use of armed Coast Guard cutters and helicopters to escort a grain ship which is to be loaded at the port of Longview, Washington at a terminal operated by EGT, a giant grain consortium. The terminal is being picketed by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). EGT, which built a new $200 million dollar terminal, is violating the port’s contract which provides for ILWU workers to perform waterfront labor.

In the SF Bay Area, ILWU Local 10, the SF Bay area longshore union which supports the demonstration, Occupy Oakland and the SF Labor Council are organizing a caravan to Longview to meet the ship upon arrival, possibly this month. Occupy movements in Longview, Portland and Seattle are also mobilizing supporters to go to Longview. Solidarity with the Longview workers was one of the motivations behind the November 2 and December 12 port shutdowns in Oakland.

Local and state police are expected to be out in force. There have been 220 arrests of union supporters in Longview and fines of over $300,000 for blocking trains and trespassing on EGT port property. Introduction of the Coast Guard, however, is the first time that federal authorities have become involved in the dispute.

In a resolution adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council on January 9, the council condemned, “in the strongest terms,” this “first known use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years.” In 1971, President Nixon called out the U.S. Army and National Guard in an attempt to break a postal strike. The Obama Administration’s planned action is strongly reminiscent of Reagan’s wholesale firing of PATCO workers, using 1248 military air traffic controllers to replace the union strikers in 1981.

The use of the military against longshore workers illuminates the hypocrisy of the U.S. government which chides governments around the world for unleashing their armed forces against their own citizens.

Longshoreman Anthony Leviege, called the Longview union struggle “a watershed struggle for organized labor. No more PATCO’s!”.

The ILWU has a record of militant dock actions over contract issues and social protests including South African apartheid and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Weakening of the ILWU and work standards it has negotiated over decades will lead to the erosion of conditions for all workers. If ever there was a time that the union cry “An injury to one is an injury to all” is relevant, that time is now.

NOTE:  California Senators Boxer and Feinstein co-sponsored PIPA.

PIPA/SOPA understanding and action: flowchart edition by Joey Sellers, via boingboing.net

How the Internet blackout affected congressional support for PIPA/SOPA, by Pro Publica via boingboing.net

Spiegel Online: "A new art exhibition in Frankfurt draws connections between demonstrations past and present. In the case of Egyptian artist Aalam Wassef, it studies how online activism has transformed protesting and become a work of art in itself -- but one that can cost people their lives."

One of the exhibition’s premises is that humanity is in the midst of a new, global protest movement similar to those of the late 1960s. Nothing will be the way it was before, it posits, because too many things are happening and in too many places, including Spain, Greece, London, New York and Russia. And then, of course, there are also the uprisings in the Arab world, the so-called Arab Spring that has cost thousands their lives.

The article in Spiegel Online speaks with artist Aalam Wassef, and looks at the role of online protest:

• Studying How Protests Usher in New Orders
• No Longer about Left or Right
• Virtual Protests, Real-World Dangers
• Online Protest as Art
• Persevering Despite the Perils

It also mentions the work of Russian radical art collective Voina, who set fire to an armored paddy wagon on New Year’s Eve, an action titled Fuck Prometheus that the group declared was “not art,” but rather “beyond art.”

"In this 2007, action, a Voina artist tossed a cat across the counter of a Moscow McDonald's outlet. Voina founder Oleg Vorotnikov said at the time that the cat-tossing performance had been designed to shake up service staff stuck in their work routine." Spiegel Online (Photo: Reuters)

More Voina:

• Overturning a police car:  photos and story, which involves a toddler as well
• Russian establishment tries to co-opt Voina (is it working?)
• Russian Protesters Use Art as Act of War: “Can they truly call their protests art?”

#J13 #OCCUPYMUSEUMS #OCCUPYWALLSTREET – MoMA BANNER DROP @ DIEGO RIVERA EXHIBIT

MoMA is exhibiting work from one of the most renowned Mexican painters of the twentieth century, Diego Rivera. Diego influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution, believed that art should play a role in empowering working people to understand their own histories. Meanwhile MoMA buys and sells millions of dollars in art at Sotheby’s auction house. Sotheby’s has locked out 43 Local 814 union art handlers, claiming they are unable to negotiate a new contract with them. “The auctioneer proposed cutting the handlers’ workweek to 36 1/4 hours from 38 3/4 hours and increasing the number of temporary laborers, according to both sides. The union said new work rules would decrease eligibility for overtime, resulting in take-home pay declining 5 percent to 15 percent. Temporary workers without medical or pension benefits would replace unionized art handlers as they retire or find other jobs. Chief Executive Officer William Ruprecht, yearly salary doubled in 2010 to $6 million dollars.”

http://www.sothebysbadforart.com/content/

Photos: 2012-01-13 – New York – #OCCUPYWALLSTREET MoMA Action

The tide is rising . . .

The book itself was published by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and accompanied the same Lords of the Samurai exhibit which inspired our critical intervention.

The review explicates cultural politics otherwise elided, duly noting the issues raised in the rich dialogue generated by the intervention.

As long as museum exhibitions and catalogs are not subject to the same processes of peer review and academic criticism as other forms of scholarship, they should be open to—and indeed welcome—informal and if needed anonymous critiques of the sort orchestrated by Majime Sugiru and his band of merry artist-activists. Because in the end, the complicated and at times heated conversation about history, identity, and representation that can be traced through the websites, interventions, blogs, and even radio shows related to the Lords of the Samurai exhibition adds up to one of the more significant and compelling English-language critiques—albeit in the form of online hypertext—of the politics of museum displays of Japanese culture.

A pdf of the entire review is available here.

[We blogged about Liberate Tate previously here.  For their complete works, visit their blog/site.]

Liberate Tate stage Arctic ice performance in Tate Turbine Hall

‘Floe-piece’ highlights Tate’s sanctioning of BP’s risky Arctic drilling

On Saturday evening (14 January 2012) art collective Liberate Tate carried out their latest unofficial performance in Tate Modern highlighting Tate’s complicity in BP’s controversial oil extraction practices around the world.

At 6.30pm at the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral four veiled figures dressed in black lifted the 55 kg chunk of Arctic ice onto a sledge and walked it in procession across the Thames on the Millennium Bridge and into the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. They placed the ice at the bottom of the Turbine Hall, standing silently around the melting ice for 15 minutes before leaving the building.

The Arctic ice had been donated to the Occupy London protest by an Arctic researcher who had brought it back to the UK.

Terri Gosnell of Liberate Tate who carried one corner of the sledge said:

“Arctic ice is melting at record rates as a result of climate change. The irony is that the same oil companies like BP that carry a lot of responsibility for climate change, are using the melting ice as an opportunity to drill for more oil in previously inaccessible areas. And Tate is still maintaining that this is a perfectly respectable company to be taking money from.”

Chris Sands of Liberate Tate who took part in the performance said:

“BP have an appalling record of leaks and spills in their Arctic drilling in Proudhoe Bay, Alaska, and now they are expanding their operations in Arctic Canada and Russia too. Arctic oil drilling is incredibly risky because of the adverse conditions and the difficulty of access for potential clean up operations. Tate is aligning itself with a company that it gambling with some of out last pristine eco-systems as a means of maintaining its profit margins.”

The performance took place after a day in which more than 150 people took part in an afternoon-long event called ‘The Corporate Occupation of the Arts’ at the Bank of Ideas, a space being run by the Occupy London movement.

Following the Liberate Tate performance the Occupy London General Assembly was held in Tate Modern around the Arctic ice – the first time Occupy London has held this daily gathering in a public art museum.

Thousands of Tate visitors have called on the art museum to end its relationship with BP so they can enjoy great art without the gallery implicating them in the climate and other negative environmental impacts of the oil company.

For more information, pictures of the performance and comment contact: liberatetate@gmail.com

*** END ****

Additional Notes:

1. A placard with the title of the performance and a brief explanation was placed at the foot of the melting ice piece. The placard read:

Floe Piece
Liberate Tate. Arctic Ice, canvas, light, water.

“The fact that BP had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.” – Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate.

[Floe Piece - an expression applied to sheets of ice not more than a furlong in length]

The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not end in 2010 for the communities affected; BP’s harmful impacts are numerous and occur across the globe year on year. In 2010-11 BP pushed forward expansion plans into the Arctic in Alaska, Canada and Russia.

Oil extraction in this region is only possible because of melting ice caused by climate change. Spills in Arctic waters are immensely more complicated than elsewhere, and indeed BP is itself responsible for the largest oil spill on Alaska’s north slope, at Prudhoe Bay in 2006, where the company continues to drill for oil.

This Arctic ice has been transported from the Arctic region to London, the home of BP; today (14 January 2012) it has been carried by Liberate Tate from Occupy London at LSX to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

The journey of this block of ice retraces the line of connection from BP’s devastating impacts on ecosystems, communities and the global climate to Tate, an art museum complicit in this destruction though its support of the company’s efforts to create a positive public image, a social licence to operate.

2. Liberate Tate (www.liberatetate.org) is an art collective exploring the role of creative intervention in social change dedicated to taking creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding. Contact: liberatetate@gmail.com www.twitter.com/liberatetate.

The 14 January 2012 performance of the art collective follows earlier self-curated performances at Tate such as:
• ‘Human Cost’: a performance in Tate Britain on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion (April 2011) when a naked member of the group had an oil-like substance poured over them on the floor in the middle of the exhibition Single Form which was dedicated to the human body and part of ‘BP British Art Displays’
Video here.
• ‘Dead in the water’: a contribution to Tate Modern’s 10th Birthday celebrations (May 2010) by hanging dead fish and birds from dozens of giant black helium balloons in the Turbine Hall
• ‘License to spill’: an oil spill at the Tate Summer Party celebrating 20 years of BP support (June 2010) – Video here.
• ‘Crude/Sunflower’: an installation art work which saw over 30 members of the collective draw a giant sunflower in the Turbine Hall with black oil paint bursting from BP-branded tubes of paint (September 2010) – Video here.

RAN activists took to the streets of San Francisco last night and turned every Bank of America ATM in the city into an Automated Truth Machine.

Using special non-adhesive stickers that were designed to look exactly like BoA's ATM interface, the activists gave the bank's customers a menu of what their money is being used for, including investment in coal-fired power plants, foreclosure on America's homes, bankrolling climate change, and paying out fat executive bonuses. (Photo: Rainforest Action Network)

The stickers also encourage BoA customers to “Stop doing business with Bank of America until they start behaving responsibly” and have the URL to our new blog, which we’ve just launched along with The New Bottom Line:

BankruptingAmerica.tumblr.com

Read the full story and check out the interactive map of all 85 atm locations, including photos of every converted Truth Machine.

This is a framing action for the upcoming Occupy Wall St. West daylong mass occupation of the Financial District on #J20.  There will also be an OccupySF “Run on the Banks” in the Mission tomorrow (Sat. 1/14) at noon, Mission @ 16th St.