3 former Iran hostages to address Occupy Oakland soon

[robdogbucky]

Imprisoned hikers to speak at 'Occupy Oakland' event

Posted: 2:58 pm PDT October 17, 2011

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The three University of California at Berkeley graduates who were imprisoned in Iran on espionage charges were expected to attend an "Occupy Oakland" rally Monday evening.

Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were expected to speak at 5 p.m. at the amphitheater on the north side of 14th Street just west of Broadway, where Occupy Oakland demonstrators have been holding general assemblies since last week in solidarity with New York's "Occupy Wall Street" protests.

Shourd, 33, and Bauer and Fattal, both 29, were arrested on July 31, 2009, after embarking on a hike in Iraq's Kurdistan region near the Iranian border. Iran accused the trio of espionage but released Shourd in September 2010 because she was in poor health...

...According to the Occupy Oakland website, the three hikers will talk about the connections that can be drawn between what they went through in Iran and the situation in U.S. prisons, as well as the hunger strikes taking place in California prisons.
The website states that this will be the first time the three will be speaking together publicly since their release...


http://www.ktvu.com/news/29511521/detail.html



Other current coverage on KTVU Channel 2 is of the march by Occupy SF from Justin Herman Plaza through the financial district. It remains to be seen what the SFPD does about the camping there tonight.



We will not be ignored

[Ian David]

1. "But other than THAT, how was your hiking trip?" n/t

[robdogbucky]

2. Hikers in Oakland

Occupy SF rebuilds camp after police raid

Justin Berton, Matthai Kuruvila, Vivian Ho,Will Kane, Chronicle Staff Writers

Monday, October 17, 2011


Hikers in Oakland

...Over at the Occupy Oakland camp, every surface on Frank Ogawa Plaza was covered with tents. Activists gathered around food stations and a library, and attended workshops organized by the makeshift Raheim Brown Free School.

The three American hikers - Josh Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd - freed after being imprisoned by Iran, addressed the Occupy Oakland camp Monday night and said they supported recent hunger strikes in California state prisons to protest conditions in isolation units and excessive gang security measures.

Having experienced the "psychological torture" of solitary confinement that the Pelican Bay State Prison prisoners are undergoing, the hikers said they understand their struggles. Fattal, 29, said he began a hunger strike the day before.

They said the Occupy movement represented the America they believe in.

"This feels like coming home," said Bauer, 29


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/17/BAOB1LIKUU.DTL#ixzz1b6t50oSD




Protests of summer 2012 will shape decade to come

Paul Saffo

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Occupy Wall Street is the latest - and most dramatic - instance of the unrest smoldering in the American zeitgeist since the 2008 financial crash. It is also something larger, a catalyst releasing social forces unseen since the 1960s. These forces will gain momentum over the next half year and converge in what is likely to be a long and dramatic summer of American protest and discontent.


Comparisons of this movement-in-the making and the '60s are as tempting as they are obvious. Now as then, it is well-educated, restless youth who are in the protest vanguard for the simple reason that the actual downtrodden are too busy trying to survive to devote time to a cause. However, the '60s student activists marched against a backdrop of prosperity and low unemployment. The Establishment had jobs waiting for the anti-Establishment protesters whenever they decided to hang up their love beads. Today's new grads are faced with diminishing salaries and jobs in areas that do not employ the skills learned at university. Occupy's activists aren't just marching to save others - they are marching on behalf of their own futures.

The current economic climate contrasts sharply with that of the '60s, when an affluent and complacent middle class acted as social ballast against radical change. The middle class today is smaller and buffeted by underwater mortgages, unemployment and disappearing 401(k)s. This is an insecure population likely to agree with the sentiments of the demonstrators and, as the Tea Party has already shown, likely to protest as well.

The biggest difference between today and the '60s is in media power. Mass media all but controlled what '60s publics viewed. Poster board, postal mail, mimeograph machines and rotary-dial phones were the tools of revolution...


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/14/INVM1LGC6L.DTL#ixzz1b6uIqKWJ