02.11, 20:18 A 10,000-strong rally has blocked the entrances to the Port of Oakland, which has had to shut down its operations for the day. The port will lose roughly $8 million per day if the "blockade" continues.
Occupy Wall Street
01.11, 19:30 As thousands of protesters prepare to launch a city-wide strike in less than a day, Oakland, California officials are gearing up for what could come as a turning points in the Occupy movement as all eyes have turned to the Bay Area.
Occupy Wall Street
28.10, 03:06 Marine and Iraq War vet Scott Olsen shot in the head by a police tear gas canister. Sgt. Shamar Thomas confronting NYPD. Marines and other former vets join the Occupy Wall Street movement. RT reports on what this could mean for the revolution.
Occupy Wall Street
27.10, 21:38 A six-year veteran of the United States Marines has posted a powerful photo of himself on the Internet in which he shows his dissatisfaction with the police raid in Oakland, California that put a fellow vet in critical condition.
Occupy Wall Street
26.10, 23:50 Scott Olsen returned relatively unscathed to America last year after serving two tours of Iraq fighting a war he was opposed to. Now he lays in an Oakland, CA hospital in critical condition thanks to a projectile fired last night by police.
Occupy Wall Street //Published: 03 November, 2011, 11:35
Edited: 03 November, 2011, 21:03
To include this chart in your web page, paste the following HTML tag into your web page HTML: TAGS: Scandal, Protest, Politics, Human rights, Law, USA, Matt Trezza, Economy, Lucy Kafanov
In the US, all eyes are now on Oakland, where anti-corporate protests see their first casualty after a young man was hit by a car. Thousands took to the streets in the Californian city and shut down operations in one of America's major sea ports.
This follows last week's violent police dispersal of a demonstrators' camp, which resulted in a former US marine being severely injured.
RT correspondent Lucy Kafanov has been at the center of events in the protest-locked port. As she explains, the port was effectively shut down after thousands of people marched from downtown Oakland to the port area and blocked all the gates, in this way firing a “warning shot” to the so-called 1 per cent – the corporate owners of the port – in an attempt to hurt the elite where it hurts them most: in the pocket.
One of the port workers reportedly attempted to speed through the crowd, almost running through the protesters. A large crowd then surrounded the car and blocked its owner from leaving. Many were furious at such an aggressive act being perpetrated against a peaceful march.
At one point, the RT crew was surrounded by the crowd, which wouldn’t let them pass either. Lucy Kafanov says protesters were voting on whether to let the team through.
“Half support us, half don't,” she wrote in her Twitter microblog. “The truck was surrounded. Some protesters wanted to let us pass [because] we are @RT_com but others got angry… They surrounded us, [wouldn’t] let anyone pass. I got out and tried to reason with the crowd.”
“To cut a long story short: we film the car plowing through the crowd. Attempt to get back to feed video. No way to get out of the port, so we hitch a ride with CBS,” the RT correspondent reported before the team finally managed to make its way through.
The RT correspondent notes the enormous contrast between the heavy-handed tactics employed by the Oakland Police Department (OPD) last week, when a tough crackdown resulted in several hundred arrests and injury to an Iraq war veteran, on the one hand, and the massive yet peaceful demonstration in the city port, with almost zero police presence, on the other.
Before this, the Occupy Oakland/Wall Street protest seemed to have got out of hand, with the windows of some banks smashed downtown, allegedly by people wearing black scarfs to cover their faces (watch the video below). Such destruction of property appears to be in sharp contrast to the behavior of OWS protesters in the Californian city, and many participants don’t approve such tactics.
“This is not what the movement is about,” one of the protesters told RT. “It’s about freedom and peace, and equality. And a few anarchists are behind all this [the destruction of property].”
03.11, 11:06 The ambitious experiment simulating a manned mission to Mars is coming to an end on Friday, when the virtual space travelers will “land” back on Earth. RT has spoken to the head of the project Boris Morukov.
03.11, 12:32 The UK is desperately searching for a cure to the spread of gang culture after the summer riots. But a proposed strategy of monitoring social networks and spying on teens may see potential troublemakers totally isolated – with uncertain consequences.
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