Tacoma SDS

Mexico-born Jose J. Cervantes-Corona was 42 when he died at the Northwest Detention Center 21 months ago. We never heard about it, but his death at the Tacoma tideflats facility is now suspected of having been preventable.

Cervantes-Corona is named in recently released and published documents showing how many "detainees" have died in U.S. immigration prisons: The New York Times last week reported that 66 names are listed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data from 2004 to 2007, while the Washington Post this week reported 83 have died between 2003 and 2008.

Article titled "Enviro-riots erupt on campus"

Last week, the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to the Street of Dreams, a small collection of state-of-the-art homes north of Seattle, contesting the claim that the homes were environmentally friendly. The group left a spray painted sign near the burned buildings claiming responsibility for the act. ELF also declared that any homes not made out of ginger bread were an abomination.

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.

The SouthSound Indymedia project was hacked by a pro-war group who spammed the site and deleted all the recent coverage on the Olympia port protests and other coverage. "They may try to censor people writing their own histories. We don't have to put up with it," the site administrators said. Whoever is responsible may or may not be caught and prosecuted, but this is a felony crime if it can be shown to cause at least $5,000 in damages under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Cyber-Crime Act of 2007.

Bert Krages is an attorney from Portland who concentrates on intellectual property and environmental law. He is recognized nationally as an advocate of the right to take photographs in public places, having appeared in media such as National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Popular Photography, Shutterbug, and Wired.

He has authored several books on photography, law, and the environment. Much of his relevant authorship regards unauthorized use issues, licensing, privacy and right-to-publicity issues, gallery and agent agreements, and harassment issues.

In light of pertinent media issues in March last year, Liam and I researched and invited an attorney at law from Portland, Bert Krages, up to UPS this year. He is a very experienced and knowledgeable person, and will be talking about rights of the media and the legal rights of photographers.

A new breed of struggle is flowering in the Northwest anti-war movement. Its aim: to stop public ports from being used for export of war materials. Activists in Washington state are evolving from demonstrators and lobbyists into direct actors against the war masters, blocking streets and facing arrest as needed.

The Road Home

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.