North America

Occupation camps evicted in Portland, Denver, Chapel Hill

Riot police evicted Occupation camps from public parks in Portland, Ore., and Denver, arresting scores, while rifle-wielding officers were sent in to remove protesters from an abandoned property they had taken over in downtown Chapel Hill, NC.

North America

Protests shut down Port of Oakland

Thousands of protesters blocked the Port of Oakland Nov. 2, bringing work there to a halt, as the city’s teachers and nurses and many businesses honored a general strike call. Protesters also blocked downtown streets, and seized an abandoned building near City Hall. Police only intervened in the wee hours of the next morning, evicting the occupied building, using tear-gas and rubber bullets and arresting some 80.

Photo: Climate Connections

North America

Downtown Oakland explodes as police evict occupiers

Police fired tear gas into a crowd of several hundred protesters backing the Occupy movement who attempted to retake an encampment outside Oakland City Hall that officers had cleared 12 hours earlier using smoke grenades and arresting 75.

North America

Federal appeals court blocks (parts of) Alabama immigration law

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked portions of Alabama’s controversial immigration law in response to a motion filed by the Justice Department and a coalition of immigrants rights groups after a lower court twice refused to block the law.

North America

Sharia and the left: between fundamentalism and xenophobia?

Xenophobes and Christian fundamentalists are behind the anti-sharia measures now passed or pending in more than a dozen states—but secular progressives resist efforts to impose sharia on the unwilling in the Muslim world. Can we avoid confusion?

North America

Brutal ICE raids continue —despite Obama’s new policy

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is under fire for recent brutal raids against immigrant families from California to Virginia. Obama has called off the ICE workplace raids, but continued so-called “anti-gang” sweeps.

North America

California prison hunger strike grows to thousands

The California Department of Corrections reports that at least 6,600 prisoners in at least 11 of the state’s 33 prisons have joined the hunger strike initiated by some 400 inmates at the Pelican Bay facility on July 1.

North America

Georgia to appeal immigration law ruling

Georgia’s Attorney General Sam Olens pledged to appeal the recent federal injunction of the state’s new immigration bill, modeled on the controversial legislation in Arizona, which is also currently enjoined.