Occupy, teachers target Mayor Johnson, Michelle Rhee Wednesday

by Dan Bacher

“Silent” protestors with their mouths taped shut – including those from Occupy Sacramento – will target Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and corporate education proponent Michelle Rhee as they hold a roundtable discussion about education issues at the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria, 828 I St, in Sacramento on Wednesday, January 25.

Demonstrators will begin to gather at 5:15 p.m. and hold a news briefing. The demonstration occurs as Wall Street corporations and foundations are funding not only the privatization of education, but the privatization of the oceans through the Obama administration’s “catch shares” program and California’s Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative and the privatization of the state’s water resources through the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral canal.

The protestors are expected to set up a ‘gauntlet” of protestors with their mouths taped shut –

something Rhee admitted to doing to her noisy students when she was a teacher. She later said some of the students were hurt when they removed the tape.

“Rhee, disgraced former-chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools and wife of Johnson, is the standard-bearer of corporate privateers, raising millions of dollars through her organization, StudentsFirst, from the likes of the Koch Bros and Rupert Murdoch to advance an agenda of union-busting, school vouchers and public school give-aways to private interests,” according to Kate Lenox, an organizer for the protest.

“The national headquarters of StudentsFirst happens to be located right here in Sacramento and will soon formally open its offices downtown on K Street above the Rite Aid store,” Lenox explained.

The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education, Occupy and Sacramento teachers will participate in the protest. If you oppose the corporate privatization of education, please show up at this protest.

For more information, contact Kate Lenox, 916-201-0225, or Cres Vellucci, 916-996-9170.

Pro-Occupy candidates will run in Sacramento Supervisor election

On the same day, OccupySacramento attorney Jeff Kravitz and high school government teacher Gary Blenner will officially announce  that they are running for Sacramento County Board of Supervisors –

as the first “pro-Occupy/99%” candidates in the area. The news conference will be held on January 25 at 9:30 a.m. at County Administration Building (700 H Street, outside entrance on H St. side).

Kravitz, a volunteer attorney for Occupy activists arrested at Cesar Chavez Park, is a civil rights lawyer and former constitutional law professor. He is running in District 3.

Blenner is a government teacher at Rio Americano High School, and a former school board member in the Center Unified School District. He is running in District 4.

“Both will announce they will be running for the 99%, not corporations, promising to hold a series of ‘99% community forums’ over the next few months to find out what the 99% want them to do if they are elected,” according to a statement from Occupy Sacramento. More details will be released at the news briefing.

For more information, contact: Cres Vellucci, 916-996 9170, press@kravitzforsupervisor.com.

Occupy lawyer urges prosecution of UC Davis police

In other Occupy news, Kravitz announced on January 20 that he was “not surprised” UC Davis students arrested in the infamous “pepper spraying incident” in November were not charged by the Yolo County District Attorney – and they emphasized that it’s time the police officers at UC Davis are prosecuted. Kravitz  said the announcement by the DA follows a pattern of county DAs refusing to prosecute after arrests by police at Occupy events, including those in Sacramento.

“I am not surprised at all,” said Kravitz. “These are peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators. In Sacramento, we have veterans, workers and students defending the First Amendment and being arrested. None of them should be prosecuted.”

“Now is the time to prosecute the real lawbreakers – the police officers at UC Davis who violated the students’ rights,” said Kravitz.

A video of the UD Davis police pepper spraying and arrests of the students became viral and spread throughout the world, becoming an international symbol of police abuse and brutality against the Occupy movement. The video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded#!, has been viewed 2,451,074 times to date.

There have been 110 arrests at Occupy Sacramento since October at Cesar Chavez Park, according to Cres Vellucci of Occupy Sacramento. The Sacramento District Attorney refused to file charges in any of them, since there was no legal basis for the arrests.

The City of Sacramento filed some charges, but has not successfully prosecuted any of them. Twenty-two cases remain of the 110 arrests.

Mayor Kevin Johnson, the Sacramento City Council and the Sacramento Police Department , along with the governments of cities across the nation, are continuing their war against the First Amendment and the Constitution. 

The crackdown on the First Amendment by the cities of Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others across the country is apparently part of a nationally coordinated campaign by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies in collaboration with local police departments, as exposed by author Naomi Wolf in her November 25 article in the UK Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy).

“So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence,” wrote Wolf. “It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.”