Category Archives: Political Repression

by | 2012-02-03 · 11:01

UN denies security used undue force when smashing camera into photographer’s face

Admit clown involved in incident

Official UN response below

Note:  The controversy regarding the incident of an unidentified UN security officer assaulting accredited photographer Orin Langelle with his own camera continues.  As you will see in the official response from UN Media Relations Officer John Hay below, the UN is engaging in the same sort of coverup we have seen from the city of Oakland and elsewhere, where security forces have reacted violently to nonviolent protesters or journalists.

It reflects what we at GJEP have asserted in the past and continue to.  The UN is controlled by the corporate elite–the 1%–and do not want unruly protesters or independent journalists interfering in their attempt to snow the global public into thinking they are addressing the climate crisis.  They are not.  The are laying the groundwork for enhanced corporate profit at the expense of the rest of the planet.

This particular battle with the UN is not over.  We refuse to allow the UN’s repression of journalists to go unchallenged–especially when the UN insists that they “are keen to facilitate media reporting …[and]… to treat all participants with respect.”

Walking up to a photographer, grabbing his camera and shoving it into his face is an odd way to demonstrate “respect.”

-Anne Petermann for the GJEP Team

For a description of the incident and the UN’s “facilitation of media reporting,” go to: Addendum: Formal Complaint Filed Against UN Security Actions in Durban

Official Response from the UN Climate Change Secretariat

Date: 2 February, 2012

Dear Mr. Langelle,

Apologies for the late reply.  We take any allegations of undue use of force on the part of UN security staff seriously.  After undertaking a thorough investigation, we are unable to confirm that there was at any time undue use of force by UN security personnel directed against members of the media in Durban.

We have been made aware of an incident involving a participant dressed up as a clown; an incident which you have also mentioned.  Our investigations indicate that it was necessary to clear a passage within the conference center that was being obstructed, in the interest of the safety of all participants and in the interest of the smooth operation of the conference.  At no time was undue force applied in the exercise.

It is not the policy of the UN Climate Change Secretariat to obstruct the reporting of journalists in any way.  On the contrary, the secretariat is keen to facilitate media reporting in the designated public spaces, as long as safety concerns are respected.  And it is the policy UN security to treat all participants with respect and not to apply undue force in the dischare of their functions.

We continue to take any such allegations seriously, and thank you for your letter.

Yours sincerely,

John Hay

Media Relations Officer

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by | 2012-01-31 · 10:51

January Photo of the Month: Windsor Star Photographer Pepper Sprayed at FTAA Protest

Windsor Star photographer, Ted Rhodes, treated in the streets by Shutdown OAS Coalition street medic after Rhodes received blast of pepper spray while documenting protests against the Free Trade of the Americas in Windsor, Ontario.  (2000) Photo: Langelle/GJEP 
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Recently, on this blog we have run several articles concerning repression against journalists in their attempt to document efforts by the 1% to keep the truth from the eyes of the people.  Both Orin Langelle and Jeff Conant from GJEP carry official press accreditation and we feel that is important to inform people about some of the dangers involved in reporting incidents the authorities want kept quiet.

Langelle recalls that on his first assignment as a photojournalist during the 1972 protests during the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, he was billy-clubbed by the police.  More recently he was assaulted by an unidentified uniformed UN security guard during the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa last month.  The security guard slammed Langelle’s camera into his face because he took a photo of that guard ejecting an accredited participant of the conference from the UN compound as he was being interviewed by the media immediately following a Global Justice Ecology Project press conference.

 As the situation on this planet worsens ecologically and economically, the dangers of documenting the plundering of the Earth and the repression of people who try to stop it will increase.

History of the January Photo of the Month: The actions in Windsor in 2000 were the first major protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas.  Others followed in Quebec City in 2001 and finally in Miami, Florida in 2003 where the FTAA ran aground.  The following article was written immediately after the Windsor actions:

Windsor, Ontario anti-Free Trade Area of the Americas
and Organization of American States Actions, June 4-6, 2000

by Orin Langelle

Windsor, Ontario–The shutdown of the OAS/FTAA meetings in Windsor were successful as business was unable to proceed as usual.  The FTAA is the southward expansion of NAFTA and intends to bind all countries in the Americas (except Cuba) to another trade agreement. Although the meetings took place, it was only with armed protection. The Windsor Star reported prior to the actions, “…the protesters have already won.  Without throwing a single rock or unfurling one banner, they’ve turned the OAS delegates and their entourages into diplomatic birds in a gilded cage.”

There were around 70 arrests in three days of action.

Delegates met behind 15 foot fences and concrete barricades as a ten square block perimeter was enforced by the Windsor police, the Ontario Provincial Police and the RCMP in full riot gear.  The Detroit River was patrolled by police boats.  Across the river, Detroit was also militarized.

On Sunday between 3-5,000 protesters led by labor rallied and marched.  The first pepper spray incident occurred during the labor rally when demonstrators attempted to unfurl an anti-FTAA banner over the OAS cage.  Pepper spray continued throughout the afternoon as other protesters blocked a bus with delegates bound for the meetings.

Monday found high school students walking out of their classes in protest of the meetings.

More high school students did the same on Tuesday, when the OAS delegates met regarding next year’s Summit of the Americas where the FTAA will be the key topic.

Although the OAS said that the Windsor meeting had nothing to do with trade, Canadian Prime Minister Chrétien welcomed the delegates by endorsing the FTAA.

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 Also check out the GJEP Photo Gallery, past Photos of the Month posted on GJEP’s website, or Langelle’s photo essaysposted on GJEP’s Climate Connections blog.

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by | 2012-01-10 · 15:12

Earth Minute: Wikileaks Exposes US Targeting of Indigenous Activists

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.

This week’s Earth Minute discusses a 2011 award given to Wukileaks for exposing the efforts made by the US government globally to undermine efforts by Indigenous Peoples to pass the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to campaign against the tar sands gigaproject, to oppose mining projects, or to protest the Olympics in Vancouver.

To listen to this week’s Earth Minute, click here and scroll to minute 42:20.

Text from this week’s Earth Minute:

The controversial website Wikileaks received the 2011 Censored News “Best of the Best” award for exposing US efforts to undermine the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

US State Department Diplomatic cables reveal that the US fought to stop passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, because it feared that Indigenous Peoples would use the declaration to claim rights to their traditional territories, or to exercise their right to free, prior and informed consent regarding development on their territories.

As part of the campaign, Indigenous Peoples in Chile, Peru and Ecuador were targeted. The US Embassy in Peru tracked the involvement of Evo Morales, President of the Plurinational state of Bolivia, Bolivian Ambassador Pablo Solon and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Also targeted were indigenous activists opposing the Tar Sands, Indigenous campaigners opposing the Olympics in Vancouver; and Mohawks living along the US-Canada border.

The US also spied on people supporting Indigenous peoples’ rights. Actor and activist Danny Glover was the focus of at least five US diplomatic cables.

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | 2011-12-25 · 09:47

Artists Equipped With a Social Conscience: The Radical Camera

Note:  Photojournalism was born to tell the truth through images and flourished for years documenting the human condition and, to some degree, the environment (e.g. the Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s).  Today, with few progressive magazines and newspapers, radical (getting to the root) photojournalism has taken a back seat to propaganda television stations, tabloids and snake oil salesmen on the radio.

You know the ones. Their purpose is to sell products and numb the collective mind; camouflaging and obfuscating reality in an attempt to keep people from having the information they need to make decisions based on fact.

An example is the lack of hard-hitting coverage by corporate media on the climate crisis.  Unfortunately the escalation of climate catastrophe is increasing even faster than was thought a year or two ago.  False solutions to climate change are touted by industry run media without real in-depth investigations.  But what the heck, the Super Bowl and the newest, slickest commercials are fast approaching, so why should corporate media worry the public with the truths of who gains in climate chaos?

The real beginnings and purpose of journalism was based on educating people with truth.  Truth is dangerous to the ruling class.

The following article is about photographers with a social conscience. It’s refreshing to see that the Jewish Museum in Manhattan is featuring this exhibit. -Orin Langelle for GJEP.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951

ART REVIEW

By KAREN ROSENBERG                 December 22, 2011

Cross-posted from The New York Times, Art & Design

One of many artistic casualties of the McCarthy-era blacklists was the Photo League, a New York school and salon for amateur and professional photographers.

"Shout Freedom" (1948) by Rosalie Gwathmey

Progressive in its politics and uncompromising in its aesthetics, the league was the place to be if you had a hand-held 35-millimeter camera and a left-leaning social conscience — and particularly if you believed, to borrow a bit of contemporary parlance, that photography was fine art for the 99 percent.

Marvin E. Newman's "Halloween, South Side," from 1951

Its members — among them Berenice Abbott, Aaron Siskind and Weegee — are now reunited in “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951” at the Jewish Museum. This stirring show traces the group’s history through some 145 vintage photographs.

A collaboration between the Jewish Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art, which both have extensive holdings of Photo League work, “Radical Camera” was organized by the team of Mason Klein (from the Jewish Museum) and Catherine Evans (from the Columbus Museum).

Jerome Liebling's photograph "May Day," from 1948

The exhibition is, in some ways, as unwieldy as its subject. The curators have a lot to say about documentary photography in general, which went through a kind of growth spurt between the Depression and the Cold War, nurtured by an explosion of photojournalism in magazines like Life and Look.

They deserve a lot of credit, though, for capturing the breadth and spirit of the league. There are some big names in “Radical Camera,” but the show’s best moments involve lesser-known talents like Lucy Ashjian, Jerome Liebling and Sid Grossman.

Morris Engel's "Harlem Merchant" (1937)

The Photo League had roots in the workers’ movement, though by the 1950s it was hardly the political center the blacklist made it out to be. The league evolved from an organization called Workers International Relief, founded in 1930, which produced an illustrated journal that was modeled on European Communist weeklies like The Worker’s Illustrated Newspaper.

By 1933 this coterie had started to focus on moviemaking and rechristened itself the Workers Film and Photo League, turning out Depression-era newsreels like the one excerpted at the beginning of “Radical Camera.”

Titled “Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special,” the film shows protesters gathering in Union Square to demand government assistance for the jobless. These timely visuals are accompanied by even timelier text: “In the richest country in the world, two billion dollars of relief for the bankers and industrialists … but no help for the unemployed.”

"Shoemaker's Lunch" (1944) by Bernard Cole

In 1936, the group’s photographers split off from its filmmakers, and the Photo League was born. But the social-documentary impulse of the group’s earlier incarnations remained; many early Photo League members modeled themselves on Lewis Hine and Paul Strand, represented in the show by Strand’s famous “Wall Street” (1915) and Hine’s heartstring-tugging shot of a Washington newsboy (1912).

Some, like Arthur Rothstein and Sid Grossman, traveled to the Dust Bowl to photograph its ravaged farming communities. But many others found plentiful subject matter close to home: in Lower East Side tenements, along the Third Avenue El and on Coney Island.

They brought empathy, but also humor, to their urban vignettes. In a shot by Eliot Elisofon, children scamper around an empty lot behind a sign that reads “WPA Cleaned This Area … Keep it Clean.” And in Morris Engel’s “Women on the Beach, Coney Island,” an ill-fitting bathing suit is front and center.

Sometimes they fell prey to stereotypes, as in the four-year group project “Harlem Document” (1936-40), spearheaded by Mr. Siskind and published in Look.” It provided ample, but often superficial, evidence of poverty and dangerous living conditions — for example in Jack Manning’s shot of fire escapes teeming with residents during an Elks Parade. Mr. Siskind later acknowledged: “Our study was definitely distorted. We didn’t give a complete picture of Harlem.”

Other Photo League efforts, though, reveal a deep connection to a neighborhood. In Walter Rosenblum’s look at life along Pitt Street on the Lower East Side (his own childhood haunt), you can tell that he identifies with the youngsters in his frame: the girl on a swing set under the Williamsburg Bridge, or the boys making chalk drawings in the shadows of tenements.

Rosenblum later went to work as a combat photographer, and the show includes one of his shots from Omaha Beach on D-Day. Back in New York, many of the League’s women found new opportunities — albeit temporary ones — during the war. A 1945 image by Ida Wyman, who became the first female photo printer at Acme Newspictures, shows the front of an Italian restaurant near her office; a sign reads “Ladies Invited.”

Elizabeth Timberman's "Easter Sunday" (1944)

By this point the league was a fully functioning school and exhibition space. It was also a social organization, a place where young men and women (many of them first-generation Jewish-Americans) could mingle at lectures and parties. It held popular “photo hunts,” sending members all over the city on wacky assignments, and fund-raisers called “Crazy Camera Balls.” (A cheerful flier for one of these reads, “Come dressed as your favorite photograph!”)

Just a few years later, though — on Dec. 5, 1947, to be precise — the league appeared on a list of organizations considered “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive” by the United States Attorney General. It responded with an open letter and a 1948 retrospective exhibition, “This is the Photo League.” But it was dealt a fatal blow during a 1949 trial of alleged Communist Party officials, when a league member turned F.B.I. informant called the Photo League a Communist front and singled out its leading teacher, Sid Grossman, as a party recruiter.

Membership became too dangerous. Newspapers and magazines snubbed league-affiliated photographers; photojournalists couldn’t get passports. In 1951, the Photo League closed its doors.

Mr. Grossman fled to Provincetown, Mass. The photographs he made there, nearly abstract overhead shots of birds on water, make a rather depressing coda to “Radical Camera.” But the show’s overall message is an uplifting one, epitomized by Mr. Grossman’s earlier photograph “Coney Island” (1947): a boisterous, gang’s-all-here group portrait.

Related:  Lens Blog: 15 Years That Changed Photography (November 4, 2011)

“The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951” continues through March 25 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.

A version of this review appeared in print on December 23, 2011, on page C29 of the New York edition with the headline: Artists Equipped With a Social Conscience.

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by | 2011-12-16 · 17:54

Addendum: Formal Complaint Filed Against UN Security Actions in Durban

As an addendum to a note previously posted by my colleague Orin Langelle regarding his Formal Complaint Against UN Security, I would add: upon arriving at the scene described in that post, I was similarly accosted. When I moved to photograph the interaction between UN Security and Mr. Langelle, I was similarly threatened with removal from the grounds. I was told to erase any photographs taken up to that point, or risk having my camera confiscated.

I showed the unidentified Security officer my badge, and asked him to take note of the fact that, like Langelle, I held formal UN press accreditation, and was simply doing my job. I then informed him that I would take no more pictures, but would stand by to take notes until the problem was resolved — upon which he again threatened me with expulsion.

“On what grounds?” I asked

“I know how you journalists work,” the unnamed UN Security Officer said. “Tomorrow you’ll publish something about this in the newspaper.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re going to eject me from the conference on the basis that I might publish something in the newspaper tomorrow? That seems to me to be a serious breach of any kind of freedom of the press.”

“Let me see your badge,” he said.

Unnamed UN Security officer attempting to block photograph, as Orin Langelle lodges complaint. Photo: Anonymous

This, friends, is the Institution responsible for resolving the climate crisis at a global level. Think about it….

— Jeff Conant

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by | 2011-11-27 · 03:23

The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy

Note: This article offers some excellent background information on how the violent crackdown on the Occupy movement in the United States was coordinated from the top by way of the Department of Homeland Security–because of its threat to the personal profits of the 1% in congress and their puppet masters.  However, Global Justice Ecology Project has a broader analysis of the threat of the Occupy movement.  The Occupy movement has the potential to fundamentally transform what GJEP calls “an unjust and suicidal system” that is literally destroying the Earth’s web of life.  Yes this is about money in politics, but is is also about whether or not we or our children–or any other species for that matter–will have a future on this delicate life-giving planet.  That is why GJEP is at the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa–not because we think the 1% dominated negotiations have a snowball’s chance in hell of accomplishing something useful–but because this is where the climate justice movement is taking a stand for the Earth–for system change not climate change.  There are plans tomorrow for a general assembly to discuss the formation of occupy COP 17.  [After article see photo and additional GJEP note]

–The GJEP Team

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality

by Naomi Wolf

Cross-Posted from The Guardian, 25 November

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, andpenned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that “It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk.”

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette andWashingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS.Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, “we are going after these scruffy hippies”. Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the “scandal” of presidential contender Newt Gingrich’s having been paid $1.8m for a few hours’ “consulting” to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies’ profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists’ privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can’t suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling in the shut down Occupy Burlington encampment. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

Additional GJEP Note:  The Occupy Burlington (VT-US) encampment was shut down last month by the Burlington Police Department. The excuse they used was the November 10th suicide at the camp of a homeless young man named Josh Pfenning who once served in the military.

Later that same day, the police and mayor invited Occupy Burlington participants into City Hall to discuss next steps. While the protesters were in the meeting, police cordoned off the entire camp as a crime scene and would not let participants return to their tents.

A statement from Burlington city officials and Police Chief Michael Schirling to Occupy Burlington explains, “In the wake of the tragic death of Josh Pfenning, Burlington Police have an active criminal investigation that involves serious and complicated work to ensure that all aspects of this investigation are conducted thoroughly and professionally. Among the issues this raises is the need to maintain control of the “crime” scene while investigation continues. Until we are fully confident that all possible investigative avenues have been expended we must maintain control of that area of the park and it remains closed until further notice.”

This photograph shows Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling’s idea of “serious and complicated work” at the crime scene on Saturday, November 12th, two days after the suicide. His “thorough and professional” effort involved dismantling parts of the camp prior to the official investigation. A Burlington police officer explained that the detective charged with investigating the crime scene had Saturday day off and would not complete his investigation and release the “crime scene” until Sunday the 13th.

The Burlington Free-Press reported that: “Police Chief Michael Schirling… said the shooting [Pfenning killed himself with a gunshot to the head] … had convinced him that the public’s safety cannot be assured unless the encampment is disbanded.”

Did the shooting convince him or did Homeland Security? Photo: Langelle/GJEP

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by | 2011-11-23 · 08:05

On the Ground Coverage of the UN Climate Conference in Durban Starts Next Week

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project’s Climate Connections blog carries hard-to-find  news from around the world on the impacts of, and peoples’ resistance to social and ecological injustice.

We will be blogging daily from the UN Climate Conference and alternative movement activities in Durban, South Africa from 28 November through 10 December 2011.  For the latest from the inside negotiations and the outside 99% opposition to the commodification of life, please stay tuned to climate-connections.org.

Additionally for the third year, we are  partnering with Margaret Prescod’s “The Sojourner Truth” show on KPFK’s Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, CA with a fifteen minute update (approximate) with people in Durban, Monday through Friday (28 Nov – 10 December).  Live at 7 am Pacific (-8 GMT) or listen to the archives.  From the halls of injustice to dissent in the streets.

-The GJEP Team

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