Los Angeles

Sunrise Protesters Arrested at VP’s House Demanding Biden Declare a Climate Emergency

Spread the love

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Six Sunrise Movement activists were arrested while protesting outside of Vice President Kamala Harris’ home in Los Angeles, California on April 15, 2024.
 (Photo: Sunrise Movement/X)

“We deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels.”

Six young activists were arrested outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ Los Angeles home on Monday while calling on the White House to declare a climate emergency, according to the youth-led Sunrise Movement.

Harris and President Joe Biden–Democrats who are seeking reelection in November—campaigned as climate champions in the 2020 cycle but have had a mixed record on the topic since entering office.

“My generation is spending our teenage years organizing for climate action because people like Kamala Harris have failed us,” said Adah Crandall, one of the activists arrested after blockading the street outside her California residence overnight.

“We’re ready to do whatever it takes to win a climate emergency declaration—we will camp out overnight, we will get arrested, we will mobilize our peers by the thousands to win the world we deserve,” the 18-year-old continued. “The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people.”

“The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people.”

The White House has been praised for climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act as well was a recent pause on liquefied natural gas exports. However, the president has also faced criticism for continuing fossil fuel lease sales, backing the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Willow oil project, and skipping last year’s United Nations summit.

Just last week, the Biden administration approved a license for a pipeline company to build the nation’s largest offshore oil terminal off of Texas’ Gulf Coast—despite surging fossil fuel pollution that is pushing up global temperatures.

Sunrise last week condemned the approval as “very disappointing” and also joined with Campus Climate Network and Fridays for Future USA to announce Earth Day demonstrations intended to pressure Biden to declare a climate emergency.

Biden claimed last year that “practically speaking,” he had already declared a national climate emergency; however, as campaigners and experts have stressed, actually doing so would unlock various federal powers to tackle the fossil fuel-driving crisis.

“Our communities in California breathe toxic air from fossil fuels and face fires that destroy our homes,” noted 18-year-old Ariela Lara, who was arrested at Harris’ home.

“I’m on the frontlines raising my voice for my Black and Latine families and friends,” Lara added, “because I know that we deserve to have affordable housing and healthcare, we deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels.”

The action targeting Harris came after a February protest at Biden’s campaign headquarters in Delaware that also led to arrests.

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

House Dems Voice ‘Deep Concern’ Over Biden Claim That Israel Is Legally Using US Arms

Aid Coalition Says Gaza Cease-Fire Needed to Avert ‘Catastrophic’ Middle East War

Continue ReadingSunrise Protesters Arrested at VP’s House Demanding Biden Declare a Climate Emergency

‘All Eyes on Rafah’ as Global Protests Against Looming IDF Assault Continue

Spread the love

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

An Israeli woman holds a sign opposing Israel’s looming invasion of Rafah, Gaza during a February 13, 2024 protest outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.  (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Demonstrators turned out from Cardiff to Tel Aviv as Palestinians in the Gaza city endured heavy Israeli bombing while bracing for an all-out ground invasion.

Global emergency protests against Israel’s expected invasion of Rafah continued Tuesday, a day after demonstrators took to the streets of cities around the world to say “hands off” the southern Gaza city whose population has swelled more than fivefold due to the influx of Palestinian war refugees.

Hundreds of protesters turned out in the cold and rain of Cardiff, Wales Tuesday afternoon, with demonstrations planned for later in the day in cities including Manchester, England and Houston, Texas.

“We do not care if it is raining—it’s raining bombs in Rafah over a million Palestinians, squeezed into an area barely the size of an airport,” protest co-organizer Black Lives Matter Cardiff & Vale said on social media.

In Tel Aviv, a crowd of left-wing Israelis protested outside the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense, holding signs with messages including “Stop Bombing Gaza” and “Stop Funding Genocide.”

Tuesday’s demonstrations followed Monday protests around the world including outside both the White House in Washington, D.C. and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s residence on Downing Street in London. Rallies and marches also took place in cities including Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, and at U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, where 21 Sunrise Movement climate activists were arrested.

Airstrikes on Rafah are intensifying as the Israel Defense Forces appear poised to launch a major ground invasion of the besieged city on the Egyptian border. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and wounded in Rafah since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Friday order to the IDF to create an evacuation plan for the 1.5 million people in the city, most of them refugees from other parts of Gaza.

South African officials said Tuesday that Israel’s bombing of Rafah and stated intent to invade the city are violations of the International Court of Justice’s order for Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide. The court found in a preliminary ruling that Israeli forces were “plausibly” committing genocide, as alleged in the South Africa-led case.

The looming invasion of Rafah comes amid a wider war on Gaza in which more than 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 7, when Hamas led deadly attacks on southern Israel and kidnapped over 240 Israelis and others. Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and a majority of the besieged strip’s homes have been damaged or destroyed by Israel’s relentless onslaught.

Senior officials from Israel, the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar met in Cairo on Tuesday to resume negotiations for an extended cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for the release of the approximately 130 hostages held by Hamas.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘All Eyes on Rafah’ as Global Protests Against Looming IDF Assault Continue

Protesters March on NYC Transit Hubs Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire

Spread the love

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Demonstrators demanding a Gaza cease-fire protest outside Penn Station in New York City on December 18, 2023. (Photo: caren/X)

“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” said one rabbi taking part in the demonstration.

A coordinated wave of demonstrations against what activists called Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza targeted New York City transit hubs Monday afternoon, with protesters demanding an immediate cease-fire as heavy Israeli bombardment of the besieged strip pushed the death toll from 73 days of attacks to nearly 20,000.

Protesters marched from Grand Central Station to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then on to Penn Station, where at least hundreds of activists gave police the slip and occupied Moynihan Hall. Many participants prayed for peace before leaving the station.

“We must stand up and not be silent to this injustice,” Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss toldamNewYork Metro outside Grand Central Station. “We hurt and cry with the people who are dying and suffering under the stranglehold of the Zionist occupation. We want the world to know that we hurt because we are Jews, we will not be silent because we are Jews.”

Independent photojournalist Katie Smith followed the entire demonstration—which was coordinated by the group Within Our Lifetime—documenting incidents including police “violently engaging with protesters” and a confrontation between the actor Alec Baldwin and activists.

According to Smith, activists later marched to a building in Greenwich Village where a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces was reportedly being held.

Monday’s actions followed recent protests in New York, including a Manhattan march led by artists remembering the life and work of Refaat Alareer—a Gaza poet and professor killed last week in an Israeli airstrike—and calling on Israel to free political prisoners including the members of Freedom Theater recently arrested in Jenin in the illegally occupied West Bank.

In recent days, large protests for Gaza have also taken place in U.S. cities including Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., as well as in cities in countries including the U.K., Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.

In California, workers at Google and allies held a Thursday die-in at the tech giant’s San Francisco office “to demand the company stop powering Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza” through the $1.2 billion Project Nimbus cloud computing contract.

More protests are planned for this week, including a nationwide action by Mennonites on Tuesday and a rally by over 80 groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that same day.

Sponsored by the Action Center on Race and Economy, Adalah Justice Project, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Tuesday’s D.C. event is being held to “demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and oppose the Biden administration’s proposed military aid package sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, U.S. southern border militarization, and immigration enforcement.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
Zionist president Joe Biden. 27 July 2021 image by Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz. Original public domain image from Flickr
Continue ReadingProtesters March on NYC Transit Hubs Demanding Gaza Cease-Fire

Protesters Take Over Strategic Sites in D.C., Los Angeles, Oakland to Call for End to Gaza Assault

Spread the love

Original article republished from DEMOCRACY NOW! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 

Daily protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza continue. In Washington, D.C., human rights activists gathered in front of the White House for a vigil calling on President Biden to back an immediate ceasefire. Body bags were laid out on the ground to represent the more than 11,500 Palestinians killed by the U.S.-backed Israeli assault.

Later in the evening, activists blocked the entrance of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters before police violently removed them. Lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, were gathered for a campaign event. This is Eva Borgwardt of the Jewish peace group IfNotNow. 

Eva Borgwardt: “We’re outside the Democratic Party headquarters because this party claims to be on the side of life and peace and equality, and we’re saying that we want them to live up to their values and oppose this horrific war and call for a ceasefire now. And we’re being responded to by the police shoving antiwar activists down the stairs, shoving peaceful protesters back with their bikes. And because our party, our party that 80% of us want a ceasefire, would rather beat up protesters than” —

Chuck Modi: “Hold on. To be continued. One second. One second. One second.”

The interview was interrupted when police resumed beating protesters, spraying them with chemical agents and arresting them. 

In Los Angeles, over 1,000 American Jews and others held an emergency sit-in on one of Hollywood’s busiest streets to demand an immediate ceasefire. Earlier this week, over 700 Jewish activists and their allies shut down Oakland’s federal building. Hundreds of people were arrested in the action.

Original article republished from DEMOCRACY NOW! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 

Continue ReadingProtesters Take Over Strategic Sites in D.C., Los Angeles, Oakland to Call for End to Gaza Assault