Granny Peace Brigade
Tuesday 27 September 2011
#OccupyWallStreet
I started off the march at noon with all the others, and we marched from Liberty Plaza all the way to Union Square. We were blocked off by policemen at times, but the majority of us sought to avoid any conflict and keep moving. We took up the sidewalks and the streets. We chanted. We were heard.
Upon arriving at Union Square, the police presence erupted. Our group stopped to regroup at the park, which unfortunately gave them time to surround the area and increase their force. We saw the nets coming out and they blocked off the streets; the march started to fray and split into different directions. We tried to turn around and march back to Wall Street, but we were not allowed.
The majority who were moving back to Wall Street headed down 12th Street. When we were between University and 5th Avenue, the place began blocking off the street. I was walking on the sidewalk in a clump with one of my friends and a few other women. Two female police officers blocked our path. We asked them repeatedly why we couldn’t walk down the sidewalk; they refused to talk to us. The one time they spoke was when one officer repeatedly said between her teeth, “do not get in my face. Get out of my face. GET OUT OF MY FACE.” The police force was increasing and blocking off the street from both ends, and not allowing people to cross the road. I was filming the scene with my DSLR.
I looked over, and in a second I saw the officer spraying something into the crowd. I recognized the mace immediately and shut my eyes; though I did deflect some of it, I was not completely successful. The burning set in immediately, and I heard the screaming. I started crying. A few women around me were lying on the ground holding their faces and wailing. My friend grabbed onto me. I dropped my camera, but it kept filming. I was hysterical. I grabbed the woman closest to me, who got hit the hardest (depicted in the first picture with the tank top and the long skirt). She was absolutely hysterical, she couldn’t see. People were running out of local restaurants and bringing us water. The police promised there would be a medic; it never arrived. Some of the other people in the march had seen what happened and half-carried us across the street to get some milk and vinegar for our faces...
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Kelly Schomburg @'Alien She'
Let's just watch the video again...
Land of the Free eh?
StephenAtHome Stephen Colbert
Radiohead is on the show tonight. I'll ask them if they're ready to settle down and have Kids B and C.
Appalachian Coalfield Leaders Turn Tables at Congressional Hearing on Mountaintop Removal
In gut-wrenching testimonies on the devastating economic costs and mounting humanitarian crisis related to reckless mountaintop removal operations, two courageous Appalachian coalfield leaders turned the tables on an EPA-bashing Republican-led Natural Resources House Committee hearing in Charleston, West Virginia today.
“The coal industry obviously wants to bury and pollute all of our water and all of who we are, for temporary jobs,” 2009 North American Goldman Prize Winner Maria Gunnoe testified. “Jobs in surface mining are dependent on blowing up the next mountain and burying the next stream. When are we going to say enough is enough?
In holding the hearing in the Appalachian coalfields, Republican members–and their Big Coal bankrolled Democrat allies–had initially brought their thinly veiled political circus of coal industry wags under the banner of ““Jobs at Risk: Community Impacts of the Obama Administration’s Effort to Rewrite the Stream Buffer Zone Rule.” In a parting gift to the coal industry, George W. Bush altered the ineffective but longstanding rule that was supposed to prevent companies from dumping toxic coal waste within 100 feet of a stream. Under the Obama administration, the Interior Department has spent more than two years to study a reversal of the manipulation by the Bush administration.
Unlike every single coal industry spokesperson that testified, Gunnoe and legendary coalfield activist Bo Webb live under the fallout of mountaintop removal operations, which have led to the largest forced removal of American citizens since the mid-19th century and left the region in entrenched poverty and unemployment. Webb, who has been actively petitioned by West Virginia residents to wage an independent 2012 Senate campaign against disgraced West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, quickly framed the hearings in a devastating reminder of the overlooked human and health care crises...
“The coal industry obviously wants to bury and pollute all of our water and all of who we are, for temporary jobs,” 2009 North American Goldman Prize Winner Maria Gunnoe testified. “Jobs in surface mining are dependent on blowing up the next mountain and burying the next stream. When are we going to say enough is enough?
In holding the hearing in the Appalachian coalfields, Republican members–and their Big Coal bankrolled Democrat allies–had initially brought their thinly veiled political circus of coal industry wags under the banner of ““Jobs at Risk: Community Impacts of the Obama Administration’s Effort to Rewrite the Stream Buffer Zone Rule.” In a parting gift to the coal industry, George W. Bush altered the ineffective but longstanding rule that was supposed to prevent companies from dumping toxic coal waste within 100 feet of a stream. Under the Obama administration, the Interior Department has spent more than two years to study a reversal of the manipulation by the Bush administration.
Unlike every single coal industry spokesperson that testified, Gunnoe and legendary coalfield activist Bo Webb live under the fallout of mountaintop removal operations, which have led to the largest forced removal of American citizens since the mid-19th century and left the region in entrenched poverty and unemployment. Webb, who has been actively petitioned by West Virginia residents to wage an independent 2012 Senate campaign against disgraced West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, quickly framed the hearings in a devastating reminder of the overlooked human and health care crises...
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Jeff Biggers @'AlterNet'
Seems to be the way of all mining interests, that the environments and communities are only there to be destroyed, the toxification of land and water; the degraded blight that remains is someone else's tab to pick up, the taxpayer. All that tax revenue from the mines' put back to repair what was the mining companies responsibility to restore. It happens with oil, with gas, with uranium, with coal, etc, etc. Time for mining to start fixing their problems and not wandering off all the time, before they have fixed and resolved any problems, to some new venture of destruction......beeden
Monday 26 September 2011
First Listen: Ryan Adams 'Ashes And Fire'
Now, throw into that complex mix his recent marriage to Mandy Moore, a two-year hiatus from music (long for him, certainly), and a chronic and painful inner-ear affliction called Ménière's disease, which apparently causes him to hear strange tones and fall over things. No, it's not the drink or drugs: He says he's clean and living healthy. In a recent interview, Adams said he's had to completely relearn music because of the Ménière's.
This time out, we have a happy (we hope) and clean (we'll take his word) Adams, making perhaps his sparest, mellowest record to date. His wife makes an appearance, singing a lovely, high harmony, and his friend Norah Jones pitches in, too. At the controls is the venerable Glyn Johns (father of Adams' sometime producer, Ethan Johns), who, at nearly 70, has records to his credit by The Who, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and more.
The result, Ashes & Fire, is soulful and low-key; not without edge but certainly more lean and hushed than, say, Easy Tiger. The lyrics are considerably softer — "I will shelter you with my love and my forgiveness," he sings, later adding, "Do you believe in love?" — but he's allowed to have a honeymoon record, right?
It helps that Ashes & Fire, out Oct. 11, features the delicious work of keyboardist Benmont Tench, on loan from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Tench adds color and character, particularly in "Dirty Rain." It's not his first time working with Adams, and here's hoping it's not the last.
Claudia Marshall @'npr'
Hear 'Ashes And Fire' In Its Entirety
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