People's Tribunal

Another speaker is talking about Burma changing from being the rice bowl of Asia to being a country used for Russia and other countries which use that money to fund their military. She also said we must stand with Honduras. The militarization of our country is something we must address, in terms of our prisons. Our military is used to give our natipn its increasing access to the world's resources. -UN should distribute funds of G-20 to cancel Third World debt

People's Tribunal

Jihon Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network said our society values comfort over clean air and water. She is speaking about the connections between environmentalism and militarism and she is speaking against green-washing. We want sustainable livelohoods. Get rid of G-20 and their proposed solutions. Solutions to enviro problems will not be easy or quick but it is the right thing to do.

G-20 People's Tribunal

Now Priva Hang ' andu of the organizatipn called Jubilee Zambia is speaking. Poor countries need to be part of decision-making. US has suppoerted repressive regime in the Congo. Why should South Africa service a debt that was used against its people. The developed world must stop extracting resources from poor countries. We must end double standards, in terms of policies toward poor countries. We must stop subsidizing agriculture of rich countries. We need better definitions for development. Stop forcing poor countries into debt.

We must network

Wilt Thompkins is now speaking. "We must network" and "create land trusts" to protect communities. "You cannot afford to be tired

G-20 People's Tribunal

Helena Wong is now speaking. She is working with a group called , as an acronym , CAAAV. She is telling stories about individuals and families experiencing hardship caused by, according to her, by "corporate and capitalist elites" have denied so many a place at the table.

G-20 People's Tribunal

In this beautiful church, Emanuel Episcopal Church, the speaker is talking about building alliances across many boundaries, based on worker's concerns.

Plan ahead for the US Social Forum in June 2010 in Detroit

While in Pittsburgh for the G-20, I have bee hearing about the US Social Forum. Being here for the G-20, I am convinced that meeting with other activists around the nation and around the world , face to face has value. As I type, I am at an event called the People's Tribunal. It is across the river from the down-town area where there is a heavy police presence. This meeting is one of the activist gatherings that did not get shut down by police. I came here to have meaningful interaction. I did not have a sense of what was getting accomplished in the streets of downtown Pittsburgh amidst the shouting and chanting. I invite Free Press readers to give their answer to that question. My guess is that taking better care of each other and of the planet requires a variety of tools, one of them being protest , civil disobedience and other forms of dissenting from the conventional wisdom. But also a valuable tool are get togethers outside the arena of street protests, per se--meetings such as this People's Tribunal.

Stockpiling human waste

A guy who is providing housing for me while in Pittsburgh played an audio recording of various scare tactics regarding G-20 protestors. Some of that involved the claim that protestors are storing human waste to be used for throwing at police during protests. Two men who looked to be in their e

G-420 ?

About 30 feet away from me, about a half dozen people are shouting "a little bit of weed is all we need." As a group of police in riot gear walked past, one of these people shouted out to the officers who were about a few feet away, "damn girl, you look good." All of the officers were men.

Just now, one of them called out to the officers, "you know you want to get high" and " I got some here in my pocket. When I first noticed them about 90 minutes ago , I thought they were xenophobic and jingoistic counter-protesters against the people calling for a change in US policy toward Ethiopia.

Originally, I had thought they were chanting "go breed your disease!" to the people protesting against the Ethiopian dictatorship. They were actually chanting, as I have learned after hearing it about a 100 times, "smoke weed, cure disease!"

Perhaps it's with my non-THC-induced paranoia that I wonder whether these protestors for weed are corporate-funded decoys meant to distract the public away from the protests for environmental and social justice causes.

Race and protests

A perhaps random thought that crossed my mind as an African - American man walked pass me is that this type of protest action would register on a somewhat higher key in the collective psyche of Pittsburghers and Americans in general if hundreds or several thousand people of color took to the streets.

Regarding the issue of race, I encountered two young men who told me that they would never go to the Hill District due to its high crime rate. I didn't experience problems when I was there yesterday. An idea is that the Black folk in the Hill District right now won't express hostility to a skinny white guy on a bicycle, given that they right now may tend to think I am there as some sort of liberal do-gooder--despite the local buzz about rowdy protestors bent on breaking people's windows.

This idea about how race pertains to protests is something I thought about amidst the mostly white and mostly male young adults in the streets dressed in black and behaving confrontationally toward police. Am I reading into things to think that things would be different if they were mostly people of color ?

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