Regime Change NOW!

Sounds like the shit is hitting the fan in *celebration* of the Republican National Convention.

Here's something interesting from this site we should all bookmark because its terribly interesting:

There are almost 2,000 people in jail. The system is overwhelmed.

Many of these prisoners will go to court. Some of these people have committed nonviolent acts of civil disobedience and will be prosecuted more severely than your average rapist.

Please don't make it more difficult for these folks. During the 2000 RNC during which only 480 people were detained/arrested and 420 faced charges, prosecution had to prove that the defendants were at the "scene of the crime". Without video or photo evidence, charges were often dropped.

During the trials resulting from Bush's inaguration, police successfully used photos pulled from indymedia to prosecute protesters.

Therefore, when you post your pictures (which are fantastic, by the way - keep them coming!), please smudge the faces of the people in them if they're doing civil disobedience. Just because the prison system thinks you should spend a year in jail for nonviolent protest, that doesn't mean we need to enable them and put good activists behind bars.

And a little something from the friend of listserv acquaintance who was on the ground in NYC:

>the city is exploding. more than 1000 arrests tonight, waves of civil
>disobedience throughout the day, almost all the major avenues blocked off
>downtown. the biggest intersections shut down by demonstrators, ringed by
>police and paddy wagons. cops have apparently lost the restraint they
>showed on sunday, shutting down anything before it starts, arresting
>independent media and legal observers.

People of the United States, if you rise up against your oppressors we will hear your calls and support you. (Replace "United States" with "Iran" and it pretty much paraphrases what GWB said about a year ago.)