We were not surprised to hear of a recent meeting between the Oakland state apparatus (Mayor Ron Dellums and the Oakland Police Department) and representatives of the local nonprofit industrial complex. Nor were we surprised when the nonprofits emerged from that meeting with directives from the Mayor and the Police on how best to prevent and preemptively condemn civil rebellion in the case of the acquittal of Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant, or Mehserle’s conviction on a lesser charge. Why were we not surprised? Quite simply because what we are witnessing is a virtual repeat of last year’s controversy surrounding the short-lived Coalition Against Police Executions (CAPE), one which shows that the lessons of 2009 have fallen upon deaf ears.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday officially ordered most state workers’ paychecks slashed to the federal minimum wage -- $7.25 per hour -- now that California has entered a new budget year without a spending plan.

Founded in the early 1970s by John Africa, MOVE is a mostly black religious and family-based political organization that, in their words, works "to stop industry from poisoning the air, the water, the soil, and to put an end to the enslavement of life - people, animals, any form of life.”

Italy's largest union has staged a nationwide strike, disrupting public transport and government services in a protest over the government's austerity measures.

As regular readers of Modesto Anarcho know, police brutality, harassment, murder, and abuse, are all issues that we cover heavily in our magazine. In the past year, many people have died in the local county jail at the hands of police neglect and tasers, as well as all of those who have have died on the streets as a result of a police encournter. As every poor person in the Central Valley knows, the police act as a unit and look at for each other. They will lie on the stand, in court, in paper work, and if need be, intimidate and threaten those that attempt to speak out against them.

In this month's Underreported Struggles: Papua New Guinea strips indigenous people of land rights; Mohawk Council rejects proposed mining project on their territory; Paramilitary group blocks a second aid Caravan for the Triqui; 10,000 people march against Monsanto's generosity in central Haiti.

Nearly 40,000 Kansas City, Mo. residents live in "food deserts" — neighborhoods that lack fresh, nutritious grocery options. And while progress is being made locally with farmers' markets and new urban agriculture regulations, experts say there's still more work to be done.

This last week has been witness to some of the most powerful protests that Toronto has ever seen. We saw rallies for the environment, queer liberation, disAbility rights, indigenous sovereignty, economic and migrant justice, community power, and more. The state responded to these actions as its internal logic dictated it must. When people reached out for more control over their lives, the marginalizing state struck back with vicious force. As an institution established by violence, perpetuated by violence, and sustained by violence, its response could only be violent. Martial law descended on our city. The cops arrested anyone and everyone they chose to. The riot squad punched pacifists and stampeded demonstrators. They detained 1100 people. Our friends were locked in cages, denied food, water and toilet paper, humiliated and degraded. The officers stood by, abused and taunted, and said they were just doing their job, as do the Eichmanns of every generation.

For years the rape of Kurdish women living in Turkey both in custody and during village raids has been a scandal. Many of the victims of sexual torture dare not speak of their experiences, because of the dishonor associated with rape and sexual violation in traditional communities. As RAWA wrote way back in 2002, "Given the social and legal penalties for speaking out, it is a reasonable assumption that the documented cases of rape and sexual torture of Kurdish women represent the tip of the iceberg. Even so, they reveal that sexual torture is routinely used against women in custody, and frequently involves their children and other family members."

Just after sunrise on Tuesday, June 22nd a group of ten activists gathered outside of the Lafeyette Ave. Presbyterian Church. This group of Buffalo organizers was on their way to participate in one of the largest gatherings of left-wing organizers in the United States. They were going to participate in the US Social Forum. The organizations that participated in the delegation included the Coalition for Economic Justice, People United for Sustainable Housing, the WNY Council on Occupational Safety and Health, Buffalo Class Action, Buffalo Tenants United, and Buffalo Indymedia. Traveling with these delegates was a group of another 20 activists from the Vermont Worker Center.

The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. Congress has just strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle East and Central Asia.

The history of the dispute goes back to 1784 when Governor General Frederick Haldimand, acting on the authority of the British Crown, granted the Haudenosaunee [Six Nations] people the land on 6 miles on each side of the Grand River from its mouth to its source in perpetuity. This constituted almost 1,000,000 acres of land, but under the pressure of increased European migration to Southern Ontario, in the first half of the 19th century this land was whittled down (by a combination of shady business deals, government mismanagement, and outright theft of land by white squatters and the Crown) to the 46,000 acres which form the basis of the Six Nations reserve today. The people of the Six Nations territory of the Grand River have been fighting to reclaim their land ever since.

In Pakistan a a struggle between the local Coca Cola franchise and their worker has come to the point where several international unions have called for a worldwide protest for Coca Cola’s nasty attacks against the trade movement and their unionized workforce in Pakistan. Pakistani laborers have had to put up with constant assaults upon their union’s basic rights in Karachi and elsewhere. According to the Muslim Observer, "Union-busting is almost a tradition at Pak Coke: It is a gut reflex."

AUSTIN -- A community-wide benefit for former Austinite and long-time political prisoner Marilyn Buck, on Friday, June 25, was a success on all levels. The event was co-hosted by The Rag Blog/New Journalism Project and NOKOA/The Observer, along with six other community groups and businesses, and supported by a lengthy roster of contributors.

Just last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the Army Corps of Engineers a green light for the Pine Creek mine permit, a mountaintop removal (MTR) mining site in Logan County, W.Va. This is the first permit decision the EPA has issued under the new mountaintop mining guidelines.

Your subscriber pledge cards at WBAI, he lamented, “they’re kept in boxes. They’re kept around the place. They’re not maintained by program or by the time the pledges were made. . . . ” Personnel are allowed too much access to pledge cards. “Once a pledge card is made out . . . it should be locked up. This is an asset. It represents somebody’s name, telephone, address, credit card number. Those need to be controlled. That’s just like cash.” The fulfilled pledges aren’t even inputted into the network’s financial database system.

The general strike demonstration largely lacked in numbers (anything between 30,000 and 50,000 might be a good estimate, that together with the demo of the stalinist PAME, which is always separate). The reasons could be anything from the numbness so many feel from the cataclysmic changes happening all around us, to the May 5th aftermath, or simply that we’re entering deep summer. In any case, what we lacked in numbers we had in the passion of some people who were out on the streets. When a couple of riot police units tried to cross through part of the demonstration at Syntagma (just opposite parliament) they were evidently surprised to see the amount of abuse they got from “ordinary” demonstrators who attacked them with empty water bottles and their bare hands, to send them out of the demonstration.