January 22, 2005 marks the 32nd anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision which revolutionized women's lives giving them the federally protected legal right to control of their bodies and protecting their right to terminate a pregnancy.

MLK DAY Keynote at Jackson Community College
Now is the time for some serious conversatin about how to grow our souls. Grace Lee Boggs explores the questions raised by MLK in his last three years of life.

As we say in the Call to the Beloved Community:

“Three years after 9/11 the wounds of people, inflicted upon one another and on our earth long before the Twin Towers fell, have clouded our minds and hardened our hearts. In the name of fighting terrorism we have made the world less safe. By meeting violence with ever-greater violence we have ended or ruined the lives of thousands of young people and tens of thousands of Iraqi children, women and men. Engulfed in a quagmire from which there seems to be no exit, we are a polarized people. The divide between rich and poor is greater than at any time in the past 60 years.”

Below are some images from DC. Video will be made available soon. Click on pics for better quality. In solidarity-UCIMC DC Reporters

San Diego, January 20th 2005 – After the SDCPJ rally and the Ground Zero Players Cacelorazo in downtown San Diego, hundreds of people stepped off the sidewalk at Broadway to begin the Reclaim the Streets party. From 7-9pm, people moved up and down 4th ave, circling around, facing off lines of cops, sometimes outmaneuvering them, other times walking right into them traps. Bikers, musicians, jugglers, dancers and more filled the streets with life in direct contrast to the contained commerical atmosphere of clubs and shops all around them. Three people were arrested at the party, all already out on bail.

Reclaim the Streets! | Reclaim the Streets handout | Photos 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Audio 1 - SD IMC press conference concerning arrest | Audio 2 – Sounds and Interviews | Call for evidence for bogus arrest of indymedia journalist

(from the Open Newswire): "Finally when the show ended at around 11:15PM about 100-150 people poured out of the church and onto the street. There was a struggle at first in keeping the group together but as movement began down Columbia road the crowd was tight knit and gaining more energy. The crowd began marching through the Adams-Morgan neighborhood at 11:22PM. They carried torches and banners, blocking both flows of traffic as they shouted, "Who's Streets? Our Streets!" in unison." According to both independent and mainstream media reports, the targets of vandalism in Adams Morgan appear to have been carefuly chosen. The corporate crimes of Citibank are well known; Riggs bank, meanwhile, helped brutal rightwing dictator Augusto Pinochet hide millions of dollars while he was under house arrest in Britain. But a DC IMC reader writes: "As much as I hate the state and its oppressive security apparatus, those so-called “anarchists” are going to make me like the police. I don’t live in Adams Morgan. But if I did, I’d be grateful that a throng of violence-prone teenage hooligans high on testosterone has been thrown in jail and thus prevented from rampaging in my neighborhood." Also see: "Post Inauguration Anti-Authoritarian March"

Fahrenheit 9/11 and Indymedia unite at River Oaks Theater at Midnight

A group of anti-authoritarian activists, affiliated with Anarchist People of Color (APOC) and Gay Shame: A Virus in the System, who are working against a gay "business improvement district" (BID) development/gentrification plan which would raise living costs in a heavily working-class/immigrant community in Oakland, came together to write about their ongoing discussions, and speak to concerns which they say have been silenced by development proponents and anti-gentrification organizers alike. "[What] we have laid out is, in fact, an attempt to make our organizing and the activist work we do, in some ways, like the kinds of worlds we hope to create and inhabit... It is... imperative that the methodology of our resistance is modeled after a non-hierarchical structure that displaces power from the top-down scheme that we are all too accustomed to." Read the article

1/22/2004: Several thousand people gathered for a Roe v. Wade Anniversary Demonstration that included a rally on Market Street and a march to the location of an anti-choice rally. After the march, participants lined the Embarcadero as the "pro-lifers" paraded towards the Fisherman's Wharf tourist district. The route of the parade was stopped twice by pro-choice protesters. Police kept the women's rights advocates out of the street as much as possible, divided them up on sidewalks, and escorted the anti-choice march through Fort Mason, down Marina, to the park area where a post-march celebration of hatred of women's right to choose when to have a child was held.

ACTIVISTS DISCUSSION: Where do we go from here?

300 join Minneapolis anti-war protest.

The second annual Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Convention was a success, according to organizer David Lubell of TIRRC. Over 150 immigrant and refugee leaders and their allies from all regions of Tennessee came together in Nashville to identify issues of importance to their communities, and to develop a plan of action to address these issues.

Local activists danielsan & brian went to Washington D.C. to provide alternative news and information about the actions and events coinciding with the coronation of King George II. Among the tactics used to dispatch news out of our nations occupied Capitol were phone calls to free radio santa cruz as well as publishing serveral articles on santa cruz indymedia's open publishing newswire.

They attended a Code Pink action where the groups chapters from across the country organized a chilly welcome for attendees of the Gold and Boots Ball the night before the Coronation, greeting fur-and-heel-wearing, cowboy themed tuxedo couples and corporate gentry with Hallibacon, snout-wearing well-wishers, and stacks of cash with everyone's favorite Dick printed on them. [ read more and view photos ]

danielsan & brian also attended a Black Block March to the security perimiter as the official Inaugural Parade began. Several skirmishes with police resulted and the march was turned back from the security perimeter. Smaller groups eventually broke through the fence, burned some pieces of red, white, and blue cloth, clashed with pepper sprayering riot cops, and mingled with lines and lines of Bush supporters waiting to get through security. [ read more and view photos ]

One of the most fun and creative actions of the week might have been the Backbone Campaign's trip to the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington D.C. A huge spine wound its way to the national headquarters of the Democratic Party the day after the Unauguration, a special delivery that recieved no notice from the office-bound democrats. Activists from all over the country carried the spine, singing (to the tune of that Hip Bone song--you know, "the hip bone's connected to the.... thigh bone"). I think it's called "Dry Bones" [ read more and view photos ]

[ Code Pink I Inaguration Media Coalition I Counter-Inaugural I Infoshop I Backbone Campaign I DC Indymedia ]

Benefit Concert Friday at Helios

On Thursday, January 20, soon after George Bush was inaugurated in Washington D.C. citizens of the town of Twisp in North Central Washington gathered to mourn the dead U.S. solders and Iraqi's by erecting a ceremonial grave yard in the town commons. Crosses and Crescents were set up and pictures of dead and maimed U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens were pinned to the wooden grave markers.

A variety of sentiments were shared at the somber creation of the cemetery including sorrow over needless loss of life and anger with the government that has forced this violence upon the world.

After a brief interchange between citizens and one of the town's two police officers, the activity was allowed to continue unhindered. The cemetery will be up for 24 hours for all interested to view and pay their respects.

"The notoriously secretive Apple is demanding an injunction against the site to prevent it publishing new stories about what it finds out, is demanding damages and also wants to force Think Secret to reveal its sources." - Macworld UK

Message board poster "Fascist Right Wing Hacker" says " think Im done with OK-IMC right now. Its San Francisco Indymedia we want at the moment."

Our President said, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation." Well, no, it isn't.

Washington was so heavily fortified that it resembled the city during its WWII days. There were cops/soldiers on every corner as President George W. Bush and VP Dick Cheney were re-crowned at the Capitol. The rally permit process was rigged to favor fat cat donors to the GOP. Ramsey Clark said George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are “war criminals” and should be impeached. The subverters of the U.S. Constitution are in now in charge of the government.

Anarchist protestors were met with police violence at D & 4th streets NW in downtown DC this afternoon.

Texas State University, San Marcos