Abril 24, 2004

Police Accountablity March

Today is a march downtown to protest the regular killing by Portland police of people of color. It was organized by ARISSA, a group led by Craig Rosebraugh that advocates for "a revolutionary movement in the United States of America."

Craig is a local activist almost-celebrity known for his study of the history of political violence, and his past role as spokesperson for the ELF. There's been a lot of discussion on the Portland IMC site about this march. People that aren't involved with the organizing, myself included, don't quite know what to expect. There has been no indication publicly of whether it will be a peaceful event, but many are nervous and concerned that it will be very un-peaceful and very ugly.

One thing is for sure, there are lots of people in Portland very upset about a cop shooting an unarmed motorist a few weeks ago, the latest in a pretty much yearly series of incidents where police have killed poor, innocent, minority citizens and have not been properly punished.

So, it's pretty imperative that something like this be properly covered by indymedia. The video collective is going to be fully deployed, with at least 8 cameras. I'm going to go out there with mine and try to do lots of interviews, and not just shoot same-old riot porn. It would be great to have my laptop out there too, because Pioneer Square has a free wireless access point, so we could do updates from the square as they happen. But, that's too much to carry around and another thing to possiby be broken or arrested.

Well, hopefully I will not run into any problems like that...

Posted by steev at Abril 24, 2004 08:23 AM
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