The past couple of weeks have seen many memorable moments in all the pomp and ceremony marking the passing of Nelson Mandela, but none as memorable as this indelible image of three world leaders keeping it classy at the Mandela memorial service last week.

And now, Mandela has finally been laid to rest in his ancestral village — and not a moment too soon, as I don’t know if I could’ve stood much more of the hypocritical spewage from the leaders of the nations who funded and armed the apartheid regime and conspired to keep Mandela imprisoned for nearly three decades.

Some of the most breathtaking spewage had to have come from that inimitable mass murderer and concentration camp operator, our very own Barack “Dronemeister” Obama:

“We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again.  So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set…”

President Sparkle Pony has actually said something truthful here, if only by accident. If the likes of Mandela were emerging today, he’d likely have made it onto Obama’s “Disposition Matrix” if he hasn’t already been smeared in a drone strike while he attended a friend’s wedding. Either that, or he might be rotting in Guantanamo right now.

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Anyone who knows my work will tell you that I really love parodying famous works of art, and the recent revival of revolutionary action in the streets following the Egyptian government’s newly-passed law restricting public protest seemed the perfect time to do my version of one of my favorite 19th Century French paintings: Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading The People.

All across Egypt, ordinary people are taking to the streets to assert their rights in defiance of government efforts to criminalize public protest. A mass student strike in Cairo proetsting the police shooting of a student demonstrator this week displayed the kind of courage in the face of state violence which should inspire the meek and cushy-living activists of the US to bolder action — but will probably not.

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A far healthier turnout than I’d expected was on hand on Capitol Hill today to mark the 12th anniversary of the Patriot Act with a protest against NSA abuse of citizens’ privacy under the Obama Administration.

A coalition of groups ranging from Code Pink and ThinkProgress to the Libertarian Party and FreedomWorks came together for an event that was “not about Left or Right, but about Right and Wrong”. Now, that’s bipartisanship.

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Are you ready for some football?

September 27, 2002: the first day of “People’s Strike” weekend, three days of mobilizations against the policies of the IMF and World Bank, and George W. Bush’s war in Afghanistan. It was 7am when I showed up at Franklin Square in downtown DC — way too early for a guy my age to be up, even back then. A loose confederation of anarchists and affinity groups was gathering at the Square, planning to stage an unpermitted “wildcat” march downtown to the IMF.

As it turned out, the march got as far as Vermont Avenue and L Streets NW before being trapped by police and scooped up. At least 400 protesters and bystanders were arrested en masse that day downtown, at Franklin Square and Pershing Park. I somehow managed to avoid being nabbed by noticing the police line forming up early at Vermont and K, seizing a moment of opportunity and slipping through before more police arrived there. It was all over by about 8am — and I still had a whole fun-filled day ahead.

Good morning, boys’n’girls! Hanging out and drumming at Franklin Square while waiting for folks to show up for the ill-fated wildcat march.

Whose streets? The march heads out of Franklin Square, taking the street at 14th and K Streets NW. After turning north on Vermont Avenue, they encountered a police motorcycle blockade at L Street. Anyone who didn’t notice the first cops appearing back at the other end of the block quickly enough would find themselves in a world o’trouble.

Are you ready for some football? While it probably seems dull to most of you, to me this is a memorable and iconic image — the moment I realized the cop at my left was distracted by some action to his right (out of the frame), stepped away and left a huge gap for me to dash through. Up until this moment, I was worried that I was nabbed for sure — and suddenly, daylight! He who hesitates is lost, as the old poet wrote.

All she wrote… Some moments later, more cops arrived, the line firmed up, and people trying to sneak through the gaps were being collared and shoved back into the crowd.

It’s a gas! Yep, that’s tear gas drifting through the foreground, there. By this time, there was nothing left for the people trapped on that block to do but wait around for the buses to arrive to haul them to the lockup.

Continue reading "Blast From Yer Past: Washington DC 09.27.02" »