“Today is October 10th, 2012, and I am ready to go to prison,” announced 24-year-old Leah-Lynn Plante yesterday. By Thursday morning, the Portland activist was in custody and could remain incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison for 18 months, although she has not been charged with a crime.
Despite media reports to the contrary, observers who monitored the election process in Venezuela say the system was free, fair, efficient and a model for democracy that bears watching.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A prominent Haitian lawyer and his law firm say he’s being persecuted for work that is politically at odds with the government of President Michel Martelly.
Attorney Mario Joseph says he has been subjected to an escalating series of menacing phone calls, harassment and intimidation over the past year.
An adviser to Martelly on Friday called the allegations ‘‘completely false.’’
Today a judge dismissed the charges against more than 90 demonstrators arrested last October when Occupy Chicago made two attempts to set up an encampment in Grant Park. More than 300 protesters were arrested in the park last year and charged with violating city park curfew. Most opted to for a community service deal with the city, but the National Lawyers Guild filed suit on behalf of 92 demonstrators to dismiss the charges on grounds that they were unconstitutional.
Who's in charge of deciding whether police officers can be fired? In Portland, not the police commissioner.
Over the last few months, protesters have planned three days of events, using the title “All Roads Lead to Wall Street,” including marches, a Rosh Hashana service near Zuccotti Park and a concert in Foley Square featuring members of the Dead Kennedys, Sonic Youth and Rage Against the Machine. In a reprise of a tactic used in the spring, some protesters said they were sleeping at night on sidewalks outside of banks.
Twitter provides real-time messaging and allows users to make posts that are broadcast to people who sign up to follow them. The company contends that users, not the company, have the right to fight requests for their personal information.
"We are under the impression that the whole country is a free speech zone," said Michael Zytkow, a 26-year-old organizer for Occupy Charlotte. "We were bothered by the idea of any government-designated playground."
Carol Sobel, a lawyer from Santa Monica, California, who co-chairs the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, asked, "Who'd want to use it? You're talking to yourself."
Her group works to push back against what it views as government attempts to stifle dissent.
The National Lawyers Guild has joined the rising opposition against Measure S, a ballot measure that will prohibit sitting on sidewalks in Berkeley if passed by voters this November.
The proposed law will ban sitting on sidewalks in commercial areas in the city between the hours of 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. A first violation of this law would be categorized as a minor infraction and result in a $75 fine or community service, according to the measure’s text, but a second violation could be classified as either an infraction or a misdemeanor.