110 turn out in Keene NH in solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet

At least 110 residents of my hometown of Keene, NH gathered at Railroad Square in Keene at 12:15 this afternoon in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Holding signs decrying corporate greed and the shrinking of the Middle Class, the group decided on a spontaneous march up Main Street to Central Square, which serves as the Town Common in the middle of a busy traffic circle. Chanting “Wall Street- Our Street!,” “This is What Democracy Looks Like,” “We are the 99% - You are the 99% per cent!,” and “ We got Sold out – They got bailed out!,” the group divided into two streams, with one parading up the sidewalk and the other occupying the northbound lane of traffic. The two streams then joined forces again at Central Square, where they directed their protests to passing drivers, many of whom honked and waved back in solidarity.

The group was as diverse as Keene itself: mothers with children in carriages or alongside them with signs, senior citizens, war veterans, peace activists, active community members, blacks and whites, Unitarians and Jews, college students, professors from at least three colleges, at least one State Rep (Chuck Weed), some members of Free Keene and CopBlock, GLBT activists, local musicians, grandmothers, and middle class men. No one group predominated or ‘controlled’ the event, and many took turns leading in protest chants. One teenager introduced the group to “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Corporate Greed has got to go!,” a consistent and humorous counterpoint to us aging hippies singing Buffalo Springfields’ “For What it’s Worth” by memory.

The demonstration continued at full strength for at least an hour. The group decided on another General Assembly Meeting at 4 pm, where one of the major issues to be discussed was a protest at a major corporate entity in Keene. More details on Friday from that event…

Gallery of Pictures from Today's Event at Facebook Photo Gallery

Video of Keene Demonstration

For What It's Worth,
by Buffalo Springfield

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

NYPD Routinely Plant Drugs on the Innocent

An article in todays Gothamist recounts the court testimony of Stephen Anderson, a former NYPD Detective, who admitted widespread drug planting of drugs on innocent civilians.

Reporter John Del Signore wrote,

A former NYPD Detective testified...that he regularly saw police plant drugs on innocent people as a way to meet arrest quotas. Ex-Detective Stephen Anderson, who worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics divisions, was called to testify in the trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny, who has been charged with falsifying public documents and business records. Anderson's testimony was intended to reveal that, as the Daily News puts it, "cop corruption wasn't limited to a single squad. In fact, it's pretty widespread!"

Anderson was busted for helping plant cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008. He testified yesterday that he did it to help out fellow officer Henry Tavarez, whose "buy-and-bust" arrests had been low.

"I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy," Anderson testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court. Anderson avoided jail time by pleading guilty and agreeing to testify against other officers swept up in the corruption bust. (The two men that got flaked received a $300,000 settlement from the city.)

The corruption I observed... was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators," Anderson testified, according to the Post. Asked by Justice Gustin Reichbach how he felt about setting up innocent men, Anderson replied, "It's almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it, they're going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway; nothing is going to happen to them anyway."

Reacting to Anderson's testimony, Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance says, "One of the consequences of the war on drugs is that police officers are pressured to make large numbers of arrests, and it’s easy for some of the less honest cops to plant evidence on innocent people. The drug war inevitably leads to crooked policing - and quotas further incentivize such practices."