Challenging Homeland Repression Using the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit as a starting point, this workshop will chronicle human rights and civil liberties abuses surrounding recent summits, political conventions, mass mobilizations and other public events. Right wing groups (Tea Partiers, Anti-Immigrant organizations, etc.) who ultimately support the status quo are given free reign to carry firearms in public and protest events where the President is present. On the other hand, progressives, people of color, workers and immigrants are often met with repression, detention and violence. This workshop will probe the larger historical and political context for the ever-increasing militarization of the police and the heavy-handed crackdown on dissent that continues to flourish in the Obama Administration. Topics include the proliferation of “less-lethal” weapons, the use of "pain compliance" techniques, local collaborations with federal law enforcement through grants and fusion center formations, surveillance (internet/audio/video), preemptive ordinances and arrests, as well as the function of grand juries and informants. The "Miami Model" and the "Green Scare“ will also be discussed alongside strategies and interventions to challenge homeland repression.
Presented by: Naomi Archer, Luis Fernandez, David Meieran, Debbie Russell
Desafiando la represión de patria Using the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit as a starting point, this workshop will chronicle human rights and civil liberties abuses surrounding recent summits, political conventions, mass mobilizations and other public events. Right wing groups (Tea Partiers, Anti-Immigrant organizations, etc.) who ultimately support the status quo are given free reign to carry firearms in public and protest events where the President is present. On the other hand, progressives, people of color, workers and immigrants are often met with repression, detention and violence. This workshop will probe the larger historical and political context for the ever-increasing militarization of the police and the heavy-handed crackdown on dissent that continues to flourish in the Obama Administration. Topics include the proliferation of “less-lethal” weapons, the use of "pain compliance" techniques, local collaborations with federal law enforcement through grants and fusion center formations, surveillance (internet/audio/video), preemptive ordinances and arrests, as well as the function of grand juries and informants. The "Miami Model" and the "Green Scare“ will also be discussed alongside strategies and interventions to challenge homeland repression.
Presented by: Naomi Archer, Luis Fernandez, David Meieran, Debbie Russell
Save Our Civil Liberties seeks to identify the increasing militarized crowd control models & information warfare tactics used to suppress dissent, while developing and teaching interventions to combat them.
The National Lawyers Guild is an association dedicated to the need for basic change in the structure of our political and economic system. NLG seeks to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers of America in an organization which shall function as an effective political and social force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests. The aim is to bring together all those who regard adjustments to new conditions as more important than the veneration of precedent; who recognize the importance of safeguarding and extending the rights of workers, women, farmers, and minority groups upon whom the welfare of the entire nation depends; who seek actively to eliminate racism; who work to maintain and protect our civil rights and liberties in the face of persistent attacks upon them; and who look upon the law as an instrument for the protection of the people, rather than for their repression.
Contact Information
Website:
http://www.g20media.org/defending-dissent
c/o Thomas Merton Center, 5129 Penn Avenue
Pittsburg ,
PA ,
15224