Tacoma SDS

Barack Obama and I share one thing in common: I am a community organizer and so was Obama. I imagine we’ve witnessed many of the same injustices, heard similar stories of people being beaten down and being taken advantage of, and have studied the same strategies and tactics for how to build power for the powerless.

A motion filed with the City of Tacoma Hearing Examiner on Monday, requests an immediate reconsideration of jurisdictional issues related to the Northwest Detention Center expansion. "We are very concerned that the Hearing Examiner has delayed a decision concerning jurisdiction and refused to halt ongoing grading, excavating and auguring. While GEO Group attorney's asked for more time due to the bad weather and the holidays, their prime construction contractor is working on Saturday and in the bad weather to complete site preparation."

Students at the New School in New York City have ended their occupation of the graduate studies building after a night of strong solidarity and street blockades. Students are declaring victory.

From New York City :

We have just occupied New School University .

We liberate this space for ourselves, and all those who want to join us, for our general autonomous use. We take the university in explicit solidarity with those occupying the universities and streets in Greece, Italy, France and Spain .

from "Haunt of Albanian Migrants"

(The following text was distributed at the student picket outside the police headquarters today by people from Athens’ Haunt of Albanian Migrants. I wanted to translate and upload it here because it shows something very important: that ties of solidarity are being formed and strengthened across different sectors of the Greek society - a wonderful thing!)

These days are ours, too

Initiative from the occupation of the Athens School of Economics and Business:

In these days of rage, spectacle as a power-relation, as a relation that imprints memory onto objects and bodies, is faced with a diffuse counter-power which deterritorialises impressions allowing them to wonder away from the tyranny of the image and into the field of the senses. Senses are always felt antagonistically (they are always acted against something) – but under the current conditions they are driven towards an increasingly acute and radical polarisation.

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

Officials at the Iraqi-owned TV station, al-Baghdadiya, called for the release of their journalist, saying he was exercising freedom of expression.

Iraqi officials have described the incident as shameful.

SUBJECT: Request for an Emergency Inspection of the Tacoma Tarpits Operable Unit 23 EPA ID WAD980723795 Hygrade Area

We request an emergency inspection of an area at the Tacoma Tarpits. The Hygrade portion of the site has been developed into a 1,025 bed residential detention center, owned and operated by GEO Group. GEO Group currently leases space to the Department of Homeland Security and is beginning construction to expand the facility for an additional 545 beds.

This weekend extensive contamination of the bioswale just north of the NWDC was found by members of the BORDC-Tacoma. The attached pictures show this contamination of petrochemicals and other probably toxic liquids. These are also keyed to the "pushpins" located at http://maps.live.com/?v=2&encType=1&cid=F58AF98DE15E423B!117.

See pushpins #21,22,23 and 25 for more information.