via Portland Liberation Organizing Council and Occupy Portland. For more information and photos, see the Portland Occupier.

Portland, OR – Sunday night, August 5th, at approximately 11pm, six officers from the Portland Police forced their way into a newly created community center inside of a duplex owned by Alicia Jackson, and arrested one person inside. The duplex was reclaimed earlier in the day by approximately 250 people from the surrounding community during a neighborhood block party. The duplex was built on land that belongs to Ms. Jackson, which had been illegally foreclosed on by the banks in 2011.

“The neighbors have shown that they support this community center and are opposed to this duplex contributing to the gentrification of this neighborhood. The police came in tonight protecting the banks and the developers that are selling out our community and profiting out of the pockets of working people,” says Alicia Jackson. “Developers should not be allowed to profit from stolen land.”

Ms. Jackson had self-evicted from her home, adjacent to the duplex, in late 2011 after a long period of intimidation from the banks and financial institutions. After her illegal foreclosure, the bank sold her home and land, which was then divided and sold to a developer who then built the duplex. The community reclaimed Ms. Jackson’s home on May 1st, 2012. She has been living in the home with the support of her neighbors since then. Ms. Jackson is a member of the Black Working Group and has been organizing with her neighbors to stop the gentrification in NE Portland. The Black Working Group and Blazing Arrow Organization supported Annette Steele in defending her home against eviction on Friday, July 27th.

During the day on Sunday, August 5th, Alicia Jackson hosted a block party on her street in NE Portland where the community and neighbors helped to reclaim and liberate the duplex built on her land. The duplex was intended by the neighbors to be transformed into a community center for people, specifically youth of color, that would house an edible food garden, community fitness center, and meeting space for organizing against gentrification and violence in the neighborhood. These home and community center liberations are part of a broader movement to fight foreclosure and defend the historic people of color communities in north and northeast Portland. The duplex had not been inhabited since construction.

When the police arrived and forced their way into the duplex, a network of community support was activated and within the hour approximately 100 people came out to the homes to offer defense, witness, and assistance to the people living in those homes.

The police arrested one person who was a part of the liberation of that space earlier in the day and is a part of the Blazing Arrow Organization. The police went through the house with a police dog and a forensics unit, and left the homes at approximately 1:40am on Monday morning. The press release written by PPB at the time of arrest contains false information, including a false photo of the person arrested.

Said Lobo of Blazing Arrow: “The police are charging the arrestee with burglary and trespass of a home, but the fact is that nobody was living in this duplex since it was built, because nobody has wanted to move onto land that has been stolen from the original resident. Ms. Jackson and the community have not stolen anything– we have only taken back what was stolen from us. The burglary charge will not hold up in court because they have absolutely no evidence that the person who was arrested stole anything, or that they were planning to commit a crime. The community took this land back, to make a community center. If they’re going to charge one person with burglary, they might as well charge the whole community with it.”

To get updates about urgent community support needs for foreclosed homes and evictions, join the rapid response network by texting @ploc-openrrn to 23359.

The Black Working Group, formed out of Occupy Portland, is an organization working to fight against foreclosure and police violence in N and NE Portland.
The Blazing Arrow Organization was formed to organize the community to resist foreclosure and police violence.

via the International Student Movement:

We are calling for a Global Education Strike. It is the first time that an education strike is being coordinated worldwide. We will UNITE in solidarity, because no matter where we live, we face the same struggle against national state and profit driven interests, and their hold on education. Increasing tuition fees, budget cuts, outsourcing, school closures, as well as other phenomena are linked to an increasing commercialization and privatization of education. Only by uniting globally will we be able to overcome these and enable free emancipatory education for all.

We are all struggling against cuts in education. Most of us are drowning in student debt. The increasing pressure to perform just makes us sick and the restrictions on education and ever-increasing tuition fees, among other barriers, make us angry! Everyone must have access to education no matter their monetary or social status. We have had enough of the pressure to measure everything - even the unmeasurable! We are sick and tired of competitiveness being the only criteria dictating everything! It is about time that we do something about this together – UNITED!

We are all people affected by the increasing commodification and commercialization of education. This is vividly portrayed by the symptoms affecting us, such as schools and universities being de-democratized and the further implementation of more hierarchical structures. The education market and competition between institutions is being facilitated by governments around the world, which are increasingly privatizing education, health care, and all other social needs.

In June 2012 alone, we recorded 45 protests in more than 40 cities in connection with the struggle for free emancipatory education. Governments have chronically underfunded the institutions, often using the current economic crisis as a pretext. They promote 'solutions' such as: rankings encouraging competition; closing schools that 'underperform'; increasing student enrollment without increasing faculty, staff, and student resources; outsourcing everything that can be outsourced; promoting elite institutions. All these 'solutions' are steps towards an increasing commodification and privatization of education, which also has negative impacts on the conditions for teaching and learning.

The education market and national states require that profits take priority over developing the capabilities for emancipatory thinking. Both need obeying 'citizens', consumers and cheap labour, not emancipated individuals living self-determined lives.

We are being mechanized to function as cogs in the capitalist machine. We are socialized to compete with our fellows on every level. Our creativity, our energy and our free spirits are actively being crushed by the educational institution.

The education system within capitalism consists mainly of training factories which are supposed to produce human capital for the exploitation on the labour market as well as knowledge to be commodified. To point out these links and interrupt this mode of production we herewith call for the closing down of educational institutions worldwide during the Global Education Strike.

Fight back! Join in the GLOBAL EDUCATION STRIKE.

All justice begins with knowledge. Stand with us as one this October and November, and the whole world will hear our call to Reclaim Education.

Many accusations are currently circulating in the corporate media about events in Oakland last night. To provide clarity, we offer the following Communique, which was distributed by autonomous individuals during last night's street party. Solidarity with our comrades in Oakland!

FUCK THE PERMITS
KEEP IT IN THE STREETS

Oakland’s Art Murmur is supposed to be about art, culture, and community. But all that it represents to the Uptown, Downtown and KONO business district associations as well as the city administration is an opportunity for commercial expansion and business development, a tool to further their agenda of gentrification.

In spite of this, recent months have seen Art Murmur explode with spontaneous energy, with the insurgent spirit of people’s free expression and free association. Rather than a controlled spectacle and disciplined promenade of compliant consumers, it has become a truly communal gathering, an epic block party, the night in Oakland when everyone is out and about in the streets. It is a people’s carnival of street artists, uncontracted musicians, unlicensed vendors, unauthorized performers, random revelers and rebel spirits of the community coming together simply to be together, to socialize and share public space, above & beyond the call of consumption.

When the Art Murmur Corporation took over the original permit from the Rock Paper Scissors Collective to manage the event, it was under the condition that community members be allowed to set up tables & use 23rd street free of charge & without permits. Now the city’s business elite are trying to enforce permit restrictions, sending us the message that our shared social & public space is not ours to use on our own terms. And they are bringing in private security forces to intimidate and coerce us into compliance—wielding the threat of violence and expensive fines.

We’re sick of getting pushed out of our own space. They say we should get permits, but the process is inaccessible, unaffordable, and there are never enough “officially sanctioned” spaces to go around anyway. Their intent is to target street artists and vendors as a means of regulating and controlling the community’s use of public space, for the benefit of expensive galleries, fancy restaurants and developers. The effect is to better provide the capital-owning business elite with a controlled and sterilized neighborhood full of passive armies of docile workers and obedient shoppers. Their ambition is to redraw urban geography according to profit motives, and convert public and social life into the plaything of private interests. This amounts to an attempt to rob us of every free and spontaneous aspect of our communities and our lives, and replace each of them with no alternative but submission and the compulsion to consume.

We refuse to surrender our space. We want to encourage the organic and rebellious elements of Art Murmur to flourish. We are here to exercise a vision of a liberated city full of free art, free music, free culture, free expression, and free streets.

We are spontaneous, insurgent, uncontrollable.
These are our streets, and we are here to take them.
FTP! FUCK THE PERMITS! FUCK THE POLICE!

When: Wednesday, August 8th 2012, 5-7pm
Where: Gracie Mansion (88 E End Ave, NYC)
RSVP on Facebook | #OccupyGracieMansion

The 1% mayor of NYC is so sure he can buy anything and anyone, as easily as he bought the office of mayor, including an unprecedented third term.

In his attempt to transform our city into his own 1% fantasy land, he has created a police state: where minority citizens are daily terrorized with stop and frisk; where only the most healthy, wealthy and white are welcome, and the “unwanted” are driven out of their homes and neighborhoods; where peaceful protesters are attacked with pepper spray and batons, and brutally evicted from lovingly built unique realizations of true democracy.

The 1% mayor has shown nothing but contempt for the disability community, has stomped on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and bought high-placed defenders of corporate-power in order to use our law against us in court.

On Wednesday, August 8th, will you swallow the 1% mayor's lie that he wants to honor the ADA, play along with his hypocrisy, forget your dignity and disability pride? Or will you join the Disability Caucus of Occupy Wall Street and let the 1% mayor know we cannot be bought for a hamburger and a pat on the head?

Schedule:
5:00: Sound Demo (Bring your own drum/ noise maker)
5:30: People’s Picket (Bring your own protest Sign)
6:00: Community Feast (Bring your own favorite dish)
7:00: Sleepful Protest Planning Session (Bring your own sleeping bag)

This is a non-violent protest action open to all who are angry about the mayor's 1% policies, which continue to marginilize New Yorkers of all backgrounds.

via the Coalition to March on Wall St. South

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012 Charlotte, North Carolina
More info on the March

• We demand equal access to employment, housing, healthcare, and education NOW! Equal Rights Now!
• Show Your Outrage over Passing of North Carolina’s Anti-LGBTQ Marriage Amendment
• Free LGBTQ activists CeCe McDonald& Pfc. Manning!

To Become an Endorser Email mowsslgbt@gmail.com

LGBTQ People need Equal Rights and Economic Justice
As LGBTQ people in the United States, we have always had to fight for rights, dignity and even for our very lives. In this sexist, heterosexist, transphobic and homophobic society, LGBTQ people are targeted for violence from our youth to old age. LGBTQ oppression then intersects with racism, sexism, ageism, the oppression of immigrants, the exploitation as working people and other forms of oppression, intensifying the hardships we experience.

As LGBTQ people we are discriminated against when trying to find housing, health care and education, paid less as workers, fired for being who we are and then excluded from societal institutions like marriage. Marriage equality is, of course, not just about the recognition of our relationships and families, but it is rooted in fighting for economic justice. There are over 1,000 federally provided economic benefits that we are denied access to that are granted to heterosexual married people. We believe that all working people – married or single—should have access to affordable healthcare and health insurance. We also want to see an end to cuts in social services, including HIV/AIDS-related programs.

While many LGBTQ related victories have been highlighted in the media—such as securing marriage equality in some states or winning laws aimed at ending violence and bullying of LGBTQ youth in schools— the bottom line is that in 2012, we as LGBTQ people still do NOT have equal rights in the United States. Perfect examples of this include the failure of Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals, which overturned part of DOMA, still allowing individual states to deny legal recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Coupled with the global economic crisis, our second-class status has meant massive unemployment and homelessness for LGBTQ young people and foreclosures or evictions of LGBTQ individuals and families. LGBTQ people, like other working class people, live paycheck to paycheck and face devastating economic hardships, while the U.S. government continues to bail out Wall Street corporations and banks such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Voice your Outrage at the Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and the Banning of LGBTQ Marriage in North Carolina
This is why we must continue to fight, especially in an election year, and shine the spotlight on the injustices and inequalities that we face. From September 1st to 6th, the Democratic National Convention (DNC) will be in hosted in Charlotte, North Carolina, home to both the headquarters of Bank of America and Wells Fargo as well as Bank of America Stadium. North Carolina is the second largest concentration of finance capital in the U.S. after New York City.

Also on May 8th, 2012, North Carolina took its ban on LGBTQ marriages one step further with the passage of Amendment One. As a result of Amendment One, the state constitution now defines marriage as “between one man and one woman,” reinforcing the ban on civil unions and domestic partnerships.

For these and many more reasons, progressive grassroots organizations, union activists, immigrant rights groups and student groups have come together across North Carolina to create the Coalition to March on Wall St South to organize a massive people’s demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention.

We, the LGBTQ organizers of the Coalition to March on Wall St. South want to take full advantage of the DNC media coverage, and are calling on LGBTQ people from all across the United States to join with us this September to demand:

• Full rights and equality in society for LGBTQ people. End the Second Class Status of LGBTQ people in the US.
• Stop the discrimination against LGBTQ People! Equal access to employment, housing, healthcare and education for LGBTQ people.
• Demand LGBTQ marriage equality now! Overturn all of DOMA and all state laws that deny us full marriage equality. We are outraged about the passing of North Carolina’s Amendment One.
• Free CeCe McDonald, a Black trans woman and activist imprisoned for manslaughter for defending herself and surviving a brutal racist and transphobic attack. We remember our transgender sisters Brandy Martell, Coko Williams and Paige Clay and countless other murdered trans and gender non-conforming people—Stop the Transphobic Violence Now!
• Free LGBTQ military whistleblower Pfc. Manning, who is facing life in prison for exposing US genocide in Iraq.

It’s up to us to fight for what we need; we just can’t leave it up to the Democratic or the Republican parties. It was the LGBTQ movement, united with other political movements, that forced the US military to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” which threatened LGBTQ service people with expulsion if they didn’t stay in the closet.

We as LGBTQ have a proud history of being on the front lines of political movements - from the civil rights and women’s movement, to today’s fights against police brutality and against repressive deportations of undocumented people. Bi Black Author/Activist June Jordan, once said, “If you took all the gay people out of the movement, there wouldn’t be any movement!”

So it is up to us as LGBTQ peoples to organize for the economic justice and for equal rights! We are calling on LGBTQ people and organizations to:

• Become an Endorser. Sign on as an individual /organization/group/school/union in support of a National LGBTQ Contingent for the March on Wall St. South on September 2nd. Email mowsslgbt@gmail.com with your endorsement.
• Come to Charlotte, NC during September 1st – 6th and participate in events of March on Wall Street South. See http://wallstsouth.org for details.
• Bring your Banners and Signs & March with the LGBTQ Contingent of the March on Wall Street South on September 2nd.
• Spread the word to your communities and constituents and help build the LGBTQ Contingent for the March on Wall St. South!