Tacoma SDS

In the early hours of January 1st, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed a 22 year old man, Oscar Grant, on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland. Witnesses report that Grant was "lying on his stomach with his hands out in a non-threatening position when he was shot". Police have confirmed Grant was unarmed and have suggested the shooting was an accident. Grant lived in Hayward and leaves behind a 4-year-old daughter.

A police car was overturned during a ruckus with local and campus police following a hiphop concert by the group Dead Prez at Evergreen Sate College in Olympia WA. The Evergreen branch of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was suspended by the college administration from the campus. The suspension of SDS was a reaction to the organization's refusal to go along with an edict from the administration banning public events at the college.

via Olympia SDS (http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/265325.shtml)

I wrote the following letter to the University of Puget Sound's newspaper, the Trail, in response to their Feb. 29th issue which featured an article about the Evergreen incident on the front page...

On Valentine’s Day, Kaylen Williams, a 24-year-old chef, had a bad feeling in his gut all day. He had hoped it was just butterflies in the stomach. The handsome, single man was on his way to a much-anticipated V-Day concert, where plenty of eligible bachelorettes would be dancing to the revolutionary rhythms of Dead Prez, a popular and politically charged underground hip-hop duo that would be making a rare West Coast appearance.

Had Williams known what was to come, he might well have stayed home.

French youths have been battling police for a second night in a suburb of Paris where two teenagers died after their motorcycle collided with a police car.

Up to 30 police officers are said to have been injured in the clashes.

Earlier in the day, a state prosecutor ordered a manslaughter inquiry into the deaths of the two teenagers in Villiers-le-Bel.

Local youths blame police for the deaths but police say the two teenagers were speeding and not wearing helmets.

The clashes come despite numerous appeals for calm, including one by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is visiting China.