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Arguably, the most important environmental issue President Obama will face before the 2012 election, protestors urged the president to stand up for the nation’s environmental livelihood before oil company profits.

Some carried a long, black tubular float that read “Stop The XL Pipeline.” Others wore orange safety vests to remind spectators of the threat of potential spills.

Read more at the Huffington Post.

The group Occupy Wall Street has been camped out in a plaza in Manhattan’s Financial District for nearly two weeks staging various marches, and had orchestrated an impromptu trek to Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. They walked in thick rows on the sidewalk up to the bridge, where some demonstrators spilled onto the roadway after being told to stay on the pedestrian pathway, police said.

Yes! Cornel West Joins Protestors In Occupy Wall Street Fight

The majority of those arrested were given citations for disorderly conduct and were released, police said.

Some protesters sat on the roadway, chanting “Let us go,” while others chanted and yelled at police from the pedestrian walkaway above. Police used orange netting to stop the group from going farther down the bridge, which is under construction.

Some of the protesters said they were lured onto the roadway by police, or they didn’t hear the calls from authorities to head to the pedestrian walkway. Police said no one was tricked into being arrested, and those in the back of the group who couldn’t hear were allowed to leave.

“Multiple warnings by police were given to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway and that if they took roadway they would be arrested,” said Paul Browne, the chief spokesman of the New York Police Department.

Erin Larkins, a Columbia University graduate student at who says she and her boyfriend have significant student loan debt, was among the thousands of protesters on the bridge. She said a friend persuaded her to join the march and she’s glad she did.

“I don’t think we’re asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again,” Larkins wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “No one is expecting immediate change. I think everyone is just hopeful that people will wake up a bit and realize that the more we speak up, the more the people that do have the authority to make changes in this world listen.”

Several videos taken of the event show a confusing, chaotic scene. Some show protesters screaming obscenities at police and taking a hat from one of the officers. Others show police struggling with people who refuse to get up. Nearby, a couple posed for wedding pictures on the bridge.

“We were supposed to go up the pedestrian roadway,” said Robert Cammiso, a 48-year-old student from Brooklyn told the Daily News. “There was a huge funnel, a bottleneck, and we couldn’t fit. People jumped from the walkway onto the roadway. We thought the roadway was open to us.”

Earlier Saturday, thousands who joined two other marches crossed the Brooklyn Bridge without problems. One was from Brooklyn to Manhattan by a group opposed to genetically modified food. Another in the opposite direction marched against poverty organized by United Way.

Elsewhere in the U.S. on Saturday, protesters assembled in Albuquerque, N.M., Boston and Los Angeles to express their solidarity with the movement in New York, though their demands remain unclear. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have been camped in Zuccotti Park and have clashed with police on earlier occasions. Mostly, the protests have been peaceful, and the movement has shown no signs of losing steam. Celebrities including Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon made recent stops to encourage the group.

During the length of the protest, turnout has varied, but the numbers have reached as high as about a few thousand. A core group of about two hundred people remain camped throughout the week. They sleep on air mattresses, use Mac laptops and play drums. They go to the bathroom at the local McDonald’s. A few times a day, they march down to Wall Street, yelling, “This is what democracy looks like!”

There has been a growing swell of coverage in mainstream media, but there has been loud complaining the cause hasn’t been championed fast enough — or in the way protesters want.

Misinformation has added to the confusion. For instance, a rumor sprang up on Twitter that the New York Police Department wanted to use tear gas on protesters — a crowd-control tactic the department doesn’t use. The claim was eventually retracted, one of several such retractions over the past several days. On Friday, a message said Radiohead would be performing in solidarity for the cause, but the band’s management said it wasn’t playing.

Earlier clashes with police have resulted in about 100 arrests. Most were for disorderly conduct. Many were the subject of homemade videos posted online.

One video surfaced of a group of girls shot with pepper spray by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. The woman claimed they were abused and demanded the officer resign, and the video has been the subject of several news articles and commentary. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said internal affairs would look into whether Bologna acted improperly and has also said the video doesn’t show “tumultuous” behavior by the protesters.

A real estate firm that owns Zuccotti Park, the private plaza off Broadway occupied by the protesters, has expressed concerns about conditions there, saying in a statement that it hopes to work with the city to restore the park “to its intended purpose.” But it’s not clear whether legal action will be taken, and police say there are no plans to try to remove anyone.

Seasoned activists said the ad-hoc protest could prove to be a training ground for future organizers of larger and more cohesive demonstrations, or motivate those on the sidelines to speak out against injustices.

“You may not get much, or any of these things on the first go-around,” said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime civil rights activist who has participated in protests for decades. “But it’s the long haul that matters.”

5. Oscar Grant Protests

One week after Oscar Grant was killed while on the floor unarmed at the Fruitvale BART station by a police officer, 500 people returned to the station to protest his death.

After the march approached BART headquarters, police used teargas on protesters. Despite the fact that 120 people were arrested for the riot, only two were charged.

4. Tottenham Protests

On August 6 2011, several people in the Tottenham area of London organized a protest march over the killing of an unarmed man by the name of Mark Duggan. The march finished at the Tottenham police station where organizers demanded to speak to senior police officials.

After police officials refused to meet with protesters and a 16-year-old girl was attacked, riots broke out that would eventually spread across all of England and crippled the country for weeks.

3. Birmingham Civil Rights Protest

In 1962, Martin Luther King and several other civil rights organizers organized a protest on the city of Birmingham, Alabama. In 1963, sheriff Bull Connor decided to deal with the protests using fire hoses and police dogs.

The images of African Americans being brutalized by police with dogs and hoses as well as Martin Luther King’s arrest served as a catalyst for the movement.

2. Greensboro 1976 KKK Protest

In 1979, several anti-racist organizers started a march against the Klu Klux Klan called “Death To The Klan.” The marchers were confronted by Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party.

After physical altercations between marchers and white supremacists, white supremacists pulled guns and shot and killed five marchers including nurse and civil rights activist, Sandi Smith, Dr. James Walker, Dr. Michael Nathan, and Bill Sampson, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School.

1. Soweto Uprising

In 1976, several African students in the South African township of Soweto organized a protest to protest recent laws forcing them to learn the language of their white, Dutch oppressors.

During the protest, 20,000 students marched and 176 were killed by South African police. The protests and subsequent violence serve as an important historical turning point in the fight against apartheid.

According to police, those arrested were protesting in prohibited areas. Others were arrested for impeding traffic and refusing to leave the street.

As demonstrators were taunting police and chanting slogans, one of the organizers went through the turnstiles with a megaphone and chanted an anti-police slogan. The scene turned chaotic as the dozens of police in riot gear pulled out their night sticks and pushed protesters, reporters and commuters away from the two arrestees.

Read more at the Huffington Post.

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Many of the protesters, who are angry about high unemployment, anti-austerity measures and politicians’ handling of the economy, refused to move. TV images showed officers beating the demonstrators and dragging them on the ground. Some wound up with bloodied hands and heads, or broken limbs.

Felip Puig, the spokesman for Catalonia’s regional Interior Ministry, said 84 protesters and 37 police were injured. Officers were seen hauling people away, but Puig did not say how many had been arrested and he didn’t say how serious the injuries were.

He did say one protester had a broken arm.

“I can assure you that there was aggression against the police with rocks, bits of wood, blows, shoves, with violence, with sprays,” Puig said.

He said police had fired six rubber bullets, 12 unspecified “projectiles” and 236 rounds of blank warning shots.

The protesters were allowed to return to the plaza, which has been occupied by protesters for nearly two weeks, after it was cleaned.

Puig justified the authorities’ action by saying the plaza had to be cleaned because soccer fans will gather there Saturday night after the Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United in London.

Scuffles also broke out between authorities and protesters in the city of Lleida, west of Barcelona. Two people were arrested, according to the Europa Press news agency.

United behind the slogan “Real Democracy Now,” tens of thousands of mostly young people have set up around-the-clock protest camps in cities and town across Spain since May 15 to complain about the government’s handling of the economic crisis and what they see as a corrupted political party system.

Nearly two years of recession have left Spain with a 21.3-percent unemployment rate, the highest in the eurozone, and major debt problems. The rate jumps to 35 percent for people aged 16 to 29, and many young and highly educated Spaniards can’t find jobs as the eurozone’s No. 4 economy struggles.

The biggest protest has been in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square, where tens of thousands of people held nightly protests for nearly a week before regional elections last weekend. On Friday, about 500 people were still camping in the plaza, but they indicated they might move on within several days.

Riot police have monitored the Madrid protesters, but have not intervened. Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Friday he was reviewing a request by Madrid’s regional government to dismantle the city’s protest zone because of complaints by merchants that business is suffering in the key tourist area.

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Yemeni government snipers firing from rooftops and houses shot into a crowd of tens of thousands of demonstrators, who were demanding Saleh’s ouster.

Obama said Yemen must advance in an orderly process toward greater democracy and prosperity.

His comments were echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who declared herself “alarmed” by the violence against protesters. She said the U.S. was seeking to verify reports that the killings were committed by security forces.

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Clinton called on Yemeni forces to refrain from violence, and said “a solution to Yemen’s problems will not be found through security measures.”

President Barack Obama is condemning the violence in Yemen that killed at least 40 people Friday and injured hundreds. He said those responsible will be held accountable.

Obama said in a statement that President Ali Abdullah Saleh should honor his pledge to allow peaceful demonstrations.

Yemeni government snipers firing from rooftops and houses shot into a crowd of tens of thousands of demonstrators. They were demanding Saleh’s ouster.

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TOBRUK, Libya  — Moammar Gadhafi’s forces overwhelmed rebels in the strategic eastern city of Ajdabiya, hammering them with airstrikes, missiles, tanks and artillery Tuesday in an assault that sent residents fleeing and appeared to open the way for an all-out government offensive on the opposition’s main stronghold in the east, Benghazi.

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In desperation, rebels sent up two antiquated warplanes that struck a government ship bombarding Ajdabiya from the Mediterranean. But as tanks rolled into the city from two directions and rockets relentlessly pounded houses and shops, the ragtag opposition fighters’ defenses appeared to break down.

Only 10 days ago, the rebellion was poised to march on Tripoli, the capital, and had appeared capable of sweeping Gadhafi out after 41 years in power, but the regime’s better armed and organized military has reversed the tide. Efforts led by France and Britain to create a no-fly zone to protect the rebels have gone nowhere, and some rebels lashed out at the West for failing to come to their aid.

“This is a madman, a butcher,” one rebel fighter said of Gadhafi, speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from Ajdabiya as explosions were heard in the background. “It’s indiscriminate fire.”

“The world is sleeping,” he said. “They (the West) drunk of Gadhafi’s oil and now they won’t stand against him. They didn’t give us a no-fly zone.”

Residents of the city of 140,000 streamed out, fleeing toward Benghazi, 140 miles (200 kilometers) northeast. But warplanes and artillery were striking roads in and out of Ajdabiya, several witnesses and fighters said. Some reported private cars had been hit, but the reports could not be independently confirmed. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from Gadhafi’s regime.

Ajdabiya, 480 miles (800 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, is the gateway to the long stretch of eastern Libya that has been in the control of the opposition since early on in the month-long uprising. With its fall, regime forces would be able to bombard Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and the de facto capital of the opposition, by air, sea and land.

The opposition once had a seemingly unshakable hold on the eastern half of the country and control of several cities in the west. Gadhafi has reclaimed much of that territory, including all but one western city.

Gadhafi warned rebels: “There are only two possibilities: Surrender or run away.”

He said he was not like the Tunisian or Egyptian leaders who fell after anti-government protests. “I’m very different from them,” he said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. “People are on my side and give me strength.”

Late Tuesday, addressing selected supporters in Tripoli, Gadhafi called the rebels “rats” and blasted Western nations. “They want Libyan oil,” he said.

During his appearance, a crowd watching on a TV projection on a wall in Benghazi shouted curses and threw shoes at the image, in video broadcast live by Al-Jazeera satellite TV.

As before, Gadhafi played down the scope of the conflict in his country. “They said thousands have died, but only 150 have died,” he said.

Libyan state television aired calls for the opposition to stop fighting, apparently hoping to sway populations in the east away from support of the rebels. “Those who are asking you to put down your arms want peace for you, so please help them and stop shedding blood,” the broadcaster said. “Libya is for everyone and by everyone. So let God’s word be the highest and the word of evil be the lowest.”

Europe and the United States, meanwhile, were tossing back and forth the question of whether to impose a no-fly zone that the opposition has pleaded for.

On Tuesday, top diplomats from some of the world’s biggest powers deferred to the U.N. Security Council to take action against Libya, as France and Britain failed to win support for a no-fly zone in the face of German opposition and U.S. reluctance. France said the Group of Eight agreed that a new U.N. resolution should be adopted by week’s end with measures to help Libyan rebels.

A U.N. resolution introduced Tuesday includes no-fly provisions. It also calls for increased enforcement of an arms embargo and freezing more Libyan assets, according to U.N. diplomats said who spoke on condition of anonymity because the text has not been released. One diplomat said the Security Council will be looking to see whether members of the Arab League, which is pressing for the no-fly zone, are ready to seriously participate in the establishment and operation of a zone.

The U.S. added sanctions Tuesday, banning business with Libya’s foreign minister and 16 companies it owns or controls.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe suggested that the fighting in Libya had already outpaced diplomatic efforts.

“If we had used military force last week to neutralize some airstrips and the several dozen planes that they have, perhaps the reversal taking place to the detriment of the opposition wouldn’t have happened,” Juppe told Europe-1 radio.

Earlier Tuesday, Gadhafi’s forces recaptured the last rebel-held city west of Tripoli. With the victory in Zwara, a seaside town about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the Tunisian border, the only other significant opposition-held city in the western half of the country was Misrata – which for days has been under a punished blockade, its population running out of supplies.

“We are short on antibiotics and surgery supplies and disposable equipment,” a doctor said in Misrata, which is east of Tripoli and Libya’s third-largest city. “We feel so, so, isolated here. We are pleading with the international community to help us in this very difficult time.”

The doctor said naval ships in the Mediterranean port were blocking aid to Misrata. Another resident said water service was cut to many parts of town, and trucks that traditionally supply rooftop tanks weren’t able to enter the city. Townspeople were relying on poor quality home-dug wells normally used to irrigate gardens, he said.

The assault on Ajdabiya began in the morning with a heavy bombardment from warplanes and ships off shore and what rebels said were constant volleys of long-range Grad rockets. Opposition fighters had heavily fortified the western entrance to the city, expecting an attack from that direction, but when it came, they were surprised to find they had been flanked, with Gadhafi forces striking the southern entrance at the same time.

“Just now they hit a group of fighters. They are dead, wounded,” said rebel spokesman Ahmed al-Zwei, who was among a group of fighters at the western gate.

Mosques in the city blared calls from their minarets for residents to join the defense. Hundreds rushed in, but there weren’t enough weapons for all of them. “They don’t have the arms, but they have the will to fight,” said Lt. Col. Mohammed Saber, an army officer who defected to the uprising and spoke from the front.

At one point, two antiquated warplanes held by the rebels bombed warships off shore to try to stop their bombardment, Saber and another opposition activist said. The activist, who asked not to be named, said rebels procured a handful of “very old” warplanes weeks ago but did not want to use them, believing that Western powers, with Arab diplomatic support, would impose a no-fly zone over Libya.

Now, he said, the opposition would use the planes to bomb “oil wells and oil sites.”

Throughout the day, rockets and shelling rained down on residential neighborhoods, several rebels said. Before nightfall, tanks and armored personnel carriers punched into the city from the west and south, facing hit-and-run attacks by rebel fighters using assault rifles and anti-aircraft guns.

“Everybody is defending himself. I am a resident of this city. I am not going anywhere,” one fighter told AP. “We have been prisoners of war for 40 years. … We are civilians – we didn’t know how to fight before this war. We are learning how to fight now. Sooner or later we will kick out this madman.”

Libyan state television claimed the battle was already won. The report said Gadhafi’s troops were “completely in control of Ajdabiya and are cleansing it from armed gangs.”

In Tripoli, hundreds of Gadhafi supporters celebrated in central Green Sqaure, blaring revolutionary songs, waving green flags and shooting in the air.

Ajdabiya has been a key supply point for the rebellion, with ammunition and weapons depots. Until now, the Gadhafi forces’ offensive toward the east has battled over two oil ports on the Mediterranean Sea, and Ajdabiya is the first heavily populated city in the area they have tried to retake.

Its fall would set the stage for a regime march on Benghazi. It is a rebel bastion, but with opposition forces in disarray after Ajdabiya, it is unclear how strong the city’s defenses would be.

A Tuareg lieutenant from Mali who has fought for the Libyan government since 1993 said the government wants to retake Benghazi, but doesn’t want to attack the city itself. He says the government will try to convince residents to force militants out into the open desert.

“The idea is to surround Benghazi but to leave one exit open for the rebels,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal.

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TRIPOLI, Libya — Moammar Gadhafi’s regime struck back at its opponents with a powerful attack Friday on the closest opposition-held city to Tripoli and a barrage of tear gas and live ammunition to smother new protests in the capital. At least 37 people died in fighting and in an explosion at an ammunitions depot in Libya’s rebellious east.

The bloodshed signaled an escalation in efforts by both sides to break the deadlock that has gripped Libya’s 18-day upheaval, which has lasted longer than the Egyptian revolt that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and inspired a wave of protests across the region.

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So far, Gadhafi has had little success in taking back territory, with several rebel cities repelling assaults and the entire eastern half of the country under rebel control. But the opposition forces have seemed unable to go on the offensive to march on pro-Gadhafi areas.

Meanwhile, in Tripoli – Gadhafi’s most important bastion – his loyalists have waged a campaign of terror to ensure that protesters do not rise up in significant numbers.

Friday’s assault on the rebel city of Zawiya, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, appeared to be the strongest yet by Gadhafi’s forces after repeated earlier forays against it were beaten back.

In the morning, troops from the elite Khamis Brigade – named after the Gadhafi son who commands it – bombarded the city’s western edges with mortar shells, heavy machine guns, tanks and anti-aircraft weapons, several residents said. By the evening, another brigade had opened a front on the eastern side. Armed Zawiya citizens backed by allied army units were fighting back.

The commander of the rebel forces – Col. Hussein Darbouk – was killed by fire from an anti-aircraft gun, said Alaa al-Zawi, an activist in the city. Darbouk was a colonel in Gadhafi’s army who defected along with other troops in Zawiya early in the uprising.

A witness in Zawiya’s hospital said at least 18 people were killed and 120 wounded. Libyan state TV reported the attackers had retaken the city. But al-Zawi, the witness and other residents said it remained in rebel hands, with skirmishes continuing after nightfall.

A doctor on the scene said pro-Gadhafi fighters would not allow medics to treat the injured, opened fire on ambulances trying to assist and hauled away the bodies of some of the dead in an apparent effort to keep death toll reports low. The gunmen killed a wounded rebel with three shots as a medic tried to pull him to safety, then even threatened to shoot the medic, the doctor said.

The doctor and witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The day’s other fighting took place at Ras Lanouf, a small oil port 380 miles (620 kilometers) east of Tripoli, just outside the long swath of eastern Libya controlled by the opposition.

Rebels attacked Ras Lanouf on Friday afternoon, feeling flush with victory after repelling Gadhafi forces who attacked them days earlier at Brega, a larger oil facility just to the east. Fighters armed with Kalashnikovs and heavy machine guns were seen streaming in pickup trucks and other vehicles from Brega heading in the direction of Ras Lanouf.

They battled about 3,000 pro-Gadhafi troops, mainly around the facility’s airstrip, said a resident of the town. She reported heavy explosions starting around 4 p.m. As night fell, the explosions eased, she said, but it was not clear who was in control of the complex, which includes a port and storage facilities for crude coming from fields in the deserts to the south.

Ahmed al-Zwei, a member of the post-uprising town committee in nearby Ajdabiya, said the rebels were in control of the Ras Lanouf airstrip and the oil and gas facilities, and the regime forces had returned to their base at Sirte, a Gadhafi stronghold.

At least two dead and 16 wounded were taken to the hospital at nearby Ajdabiya, although that did not include the toll from other hospitals in the area. Al-Zwei, however, said the Gadhafi forces had killed 20 guards from the two facilities. The death toll couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

To the northeast, hospital officials said at least 17 people were killed in an explosion at an ammunition storage facility at a military base about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

The blast destroyed one warehouse in the base and damaged a second, according to an ambulance driver who said he recovered body parts from the scene. The driver spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

“There were so many people killed. I can’t describe it,” said a resident of Benghazi who gave his name as Abdullah and whose voice was filled with emotion.

Dr. Habib al-Obeidi in Benghazi’s al-Jalaa hospital says the blast also hit a residential area. Witnesses on the scene, said secondary explosions destroyed two firetrucks.

The cause of the blast was unclear. Al-Obeidi says it apparently was triggered when people went into the storage facility to collect weapons, but others blamed pro-Gadhafi saboteurs.

The fall of other parts of the country has made control of Tripoli crucial for Gahdafi. His loyalists have taken fierce action to ensure protesters cannot rise up and overwhelm the city as they have in other places.

Last week, Friday marches were met by gunfire from militiamen shooting into crowds, killing a still undetermined number. Since then, pro-Gadhafi forces have carried out a wave of arrests against suspected demonstrators, snatching some from their homes in nighttime raids and terrorizing even the most restive neighborhoods.

The fear seemed to have had an impact, and some protests planned Friday in other parts of the capital didn’t get off the ground. One resident said he went to prayers at a downtown mosque and found police officers standing outside to ensure no one marched. After prayers, worshippers dispersed without protests.

Some 400 protesters marched out of the Murad Agha mosque after noon prayers in the eastern Tripoli district of Tajoura, chanting, “The people want to bring the regime down!” and waved the red, black and green flag of Libya’s pre-Gadhafi monarchy, which has become the banner of the uprising.

Pro-Gadhafi forces quickly moved in. They fired volleys of tear gas and – when the marchers continued – opened fire with live ammunition, according to witnesses.

It was not clear if they fired at the crowd or into the air, but the protesters scattered, many of them taking refuge back in the mosque, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. A doctor said several people were wounded and taken to a hospital.

“All these people are threatened with death,” said a 35-year-old among the Tajoura protesters Friday. “We have no education, no economy, no infrastructure. … We want nothing but the end of the regime. We were born free but he is suppressing us.” He said he had recently had kidney surgery, but “look at me, still I went out with the people because we are oppressed people.”

“I am not afraid,” said another man in the march. “We want to show the world that we are not afraid.”

Thousands of Gadhafi supporters later packed into the capital’s central Green Square, waving green flags and pictures of the Libyan leader in a counterdemonstration complete with fireworks.

Armed men dressed in blue formed a security cordon around mosques in Tripoli while helicopters buzzed overhead.

Before prayers, some 1,500 worshippers inside the Murad Agha mosque debated what to do.

At one point, they decided to hold a sit-in inside the mosque to avoid coming under gunfire by stepping outside. In the mosque’s courtyard, they burned a copy of the Green Book, Gadhafi’s political manifesto, as well as the green flag of Gadhafi’s Libya.

At the same time, young men from the neighborhood transformed a nearby square, tearing down posters of the Libyan leader and replacing them with the flags. They spray-painted walls with graffiti reading, “Down with Gadhafi” and “Tajoura will dig your grave.”

In the end, the 400 worshippers in the mosque decided to march.

Internet services, which have been spotty throughout Libya’s upheaval, appeared to be halted completely in Tripoli on Friday before the protests. Renesys Corp., a Manchester, New Hampshire, company that maps the pathways of the Internet, said it wasn’t able to reach any of the websites it tried to access inside Libya. Google’s transparency report, which shows traffic to the company’s sites from various countries, also showed that Internet traffic in Libya had fallen to zero.

Libyan authorities briefly barred many foreign journalists from leaving their Tripoli hotel, claiming it was for their protection because they had information “al-Qaida elements” planned to open fire on police to spark clashes. They later allowed them to go out.

Several hours before prayers, security forces began taking up positions. In Tajoura, police set up two checkpoints on the main highway to downtown. They stopped cars to search them, check IDs and question them.

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WASHINGTON – Ratcheting up the pressure, President Barack Obama on Saturday said Moammar Gadhafi has lost his legitimacy to rule and urged the Libyan leader to leave power immediately.

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It was the first time Obama has called for Gadhafi to step down, coming after days of bloodshed in Libya. Gadhafi has vowed to fight to the end to maintain his four-decade grip on power in the North African country.

“When a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,” the White House said in a statement, summarizing Obama’s telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Until now, U.S. officials have held back from such a pronouncement, insisting it is for the Libyan people to determine who their leader should be.

Obama commented a day after the administration froze all Libyan assets in the U.S. that belong to Gadhafi, his government and four of his children. The U.S. also closed its embassy in Libya and suspended the limited defense trade between the countries.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced further sanctions Saturday, revoking visas for senior Libyan officials and their immediate family members. She said future applications from those blacklisted for travel to the United States would be rejected.

Gadhafi “should go without further bloodshed and violence,” Clinton said in a separate statement.

Obama has been holding a series of discussions with world leaders about the unrest in Libya. The administration is hoping that the world speaks with a single voice against Gadhafi’s violent crackdown on protesters, and the president is sending Clinton to Geneva on Sunday to coordinate with foreign policy chiefs from several countries.

The U.S. tone shifted sharply on Friday after Americans in Libya were evacuated from the country by ferry and a chartered airplane.

Shortly after, Obama signed an executive order outlining financial penalties designed to pressure Gadhafi’s government into halting the violence.

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WISCONSIN — Wisconsin faces a $3.6 billion debt over the next  two years, and a bill proposed by Governor Scott Walker would call for public employees to pay more for their pensions and health insurance as a means of tackling the deficit.

The proposed bill has become the national issue of the moment, as an estimated 25,000  protesters continue to gather at the State Capitol. The Madison Metropolitan School district canceled classes on Wednesday after 40 percent of its employees stayed home in protest of the bill, which is seen by many as part of a larger scheme to outlaw unions.

The Huffington Post reports:

As dissenters streamed into the halls of the capitol building Thursday, Democratic state senators fled the state in a move to block a vote on the measure. They ended up at a hotel in Northern Illinois, where they remain, at least for the time being. The state’s Assembly has planned a vote for Friday.

While many, including President Obama, have characterized the bill as an “assault on unions,” Gov. Walker maintained Friday that his legislation, which would strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights and force them to pay a larger share of the cost of health care and pensions, was a “modest proposal.”

Democrats have left the Capitol since Thursday, preventing a Senate vote from happening at all, and it seems unlikely they’ll be returning any  time soon. The protesters say they have no plans to leave the Capitol until there is an end to the proposal.

Read more at HuffingtonPost.com

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South Carolina — The NAACP will be protesting the 150th anniversary secession ball in Charleston, South Carolina. State reports:

NAACP members and supporters plan to hold a peaceful march in downtown Charleston the day of the ball, on Dec. 20, followed by a meeting and question-and-answer session focusing on slavery. Participants will watch segments of “Birth of a Nation,” a 1915 silent film that portrayed Ku Klux Klan members as heroes.

Nearby at Charleston’s Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, ball attendees, who will pay $100 a ticket, will don formal, period dress, eat and dance the Virginia Reel as a band plays “Dixie.” The evening’s highlight will be a play reenacting the signing of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession 150 years ago, which severed the state’s ties with the Union and paved the way for the Civil War.

“This is nothing more than a celebration of slavery,” Randolph said of the event.

Read The Whole Story

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LOS ANGELES – Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer’s fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife.

But his words did little to dissuade demonstrators, who spilled into the streets for a second straight night Tuesday — some to pray and light candles and others to pelt a police station near downtown Los Angeles with eggs, rocks and bottles.

Police reported 22 arrests on Tuesday night, mainly for failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, Officer Karen Rayner said.

Officers fired at least two rounds of nonlethal foam projectiles at demonstrators, Rayner said.

At least one officer and a Univision reporter were slightly injured by thrown or slingshot-propelled objects, police told City News Service, and a man who fell off his bicycle suffered a head wound.

Some protesters pushed rolling metal trash bins at officers and tossed household items from apartment buildings.

“People were throwing televisions, air conditioning units, miscellaneous furniture and other objects from the windows,” Lt. Cory Palka said.

Guatemalan immigrant Manuel Jamines, 37, was shot twice by a police officer Sunday afternoon near MacArthur Park, a poor neighborhood packed with recent immigrants from Central America.

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A pastor arrested Monday for protesting Warner Robins High School’s “Demon” nickname and mascot says he was just standing up for Jesus — and he’d do it again. Pastor Donald Crosby said the school’s demon logo just encourages children to evil.

“I don’t scare easily. Lock me up as many times as you have to lock me up. Even kill me if you have to. I’m standing up for Jesus.”

He criticized other Christians who, he says, are singing in church while their children are being taught to praise demons.

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“Demons aren’t lazy, Christians are,” he said.

He said the city of Warner Robins must repent for its demon-praising.

Crosby is pastor of Kingdom Builders Church of Jesus Christ in Macon.
The first time Crosby was arrested was on Monday. He was charged with disorderly conduct and picketing outside the school without a permit. He was released from jail on a $650 bond.

Crosby, new to the Warner Robins area, has been protesting for several months the mascot for the school his son attends. Crosby has said he was shocked when he realized his own son could be among the hundreds of students shouting “Go Demons!” in cheering on the school’s historically successful football team.

Read entire story at 13WMAZ.com

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TORONTO – Police raided a university building and rounded up hundreds of protesters Sunday in an effort to quell further violence near the G-20 global economic summit site a day after black-clad youths rampaged through the city, smashing windows and torching police cars.

The violence shocked Canada, where civil unrest is almost unknown. Toronto police Sunday said they had never before used tear gas until Saturday’s clashes with anti-Globalization activists.

Police said they have arrested more than 600 demonstrators, many of whom were hauled away in plastic handcuffs and taken to a temporary holding center constructed for the summit.

Police adopted a more aggressive strategy Sunday by going into the crowd to make arrests, compared to the previous day when they stood back as protesters torched four police cars and broke store windows.

No serious injuries were reported among police, protesters or bystanders, Toronto Police Constable Tony Vella said Sunday.

Thousands of police officers in riot gear formed cordons to prevent radical anti-globalization demonstrations from breaching the steel and concrete security fence surrounding the Group of 20 summit site.

Security was being provided by an estimated 19,000 law enforcement officers drawn from across Canada. Security costs for the G-20 in Toronto and the Group of Eight summit that ended Saturday in Huntsville, 140 miles (225 kilometers) away, were estimated at more than US$900 million.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper deplored the actions of a “few thugs” and suggested the violence justified the controversial cost. “I think it goes a long way to explaining why we have the kind of security costs around these summits that we do,” he said.

The disorder and vandalism occurred just blocks from where U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders were meeting and staying.

On Sunday, protesters gathered at a park near the detention center — about 2 1/2 miles (four kilometers) east of where the leaders were meeting.

Plainclothes police jumped out of an unmarked van, grabbed a protester off the street and whisked him away in the vehicle. The protest was then quickly broken up by riot police, who set off a device that created a cloud of smoke that sent protesters running down the street. Vella said it was not tear gas.

Bridie Wyrock, 20, from Cleveland, Ohio, said she was arrested for public mischief for sitting on a street in the financial district. Wyrock, held for 19 hours before being released, said there weren’t enough toilets and said some people resisted detention, but said police treated most people with respect.

“They put us in cages, blocked off on all three sides,” Wyrock said. “It was cold and dirty.”

An anti-poverty group called The Global Call to Action Against Poverty criticized the protesters who committed violence.

“A bunch of pimply faced teenagers trashing shops and burning cars does not help anyone,” said Rajesh Latchman of GCAP South Africa. “These hooligans obscure the real issues.”

Previous global summit protests have turned violent. In 1999, 50,000 protesters shut down World Trade Organization sessions in Seattle as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. There were some 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage. One man died after clashes with police at a G-20 meeting held in London in April 2009.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Police fired tear gas outside the ruins of Haiti’s national palace Monday to control 2,000 demonstrators calling for President Rene Preval’s resignation in the largest political protest since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Trucks filled with riot police rolled behind the protesters as they jogged past tarps and shanties shouting insults at Preval, who has been criticized for his low profile following the quake and for allegedly using the destruction as a pretext to stay in office beyond his term.

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“He is profiting from this disaster in order to stay in power,” said Herve Santilus, 39, a sociologist who was laid off a few weeks after the magnitude-7 quake struck and has not been able to find work since.

Many demonstrators identified themselves as supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was exiled to Africa aboard a U.S. plane during a 2004 rebellion. Protesters marched to the national mall following speaker trucks that trumpeted calls for Aristide’s return.

At several points the protest encountered trouble: In the narrow passages of the Bel-Air slum, counterprotesters threw rocks at the passing crowd. At least twice, shotgun blasts rang out from cracked and collapsed buildings, but it was not clear who fired them.

At least one man was wounded by a bullet, police spokesman Frantz Lerebours said. His condition was not immediately known.

Students supporting the protest threw rocks at passing U.N. vehicles, only to be choked into submission by volleys of police-fired tear gas.

Police separately arrested at least seven people on charges of robbing people in the mob. A U.S. Army helicopter circled overhead, centering on areas where the crowd was heaviest.

This was the strongest showing of opposition to the Haitian leader since the quake, which killed a government-estimated 230,000 to 300,000 people. The insults were deep and vulgar: Some talked about Preval’s mother, others chanted that the first lady belonged “under the rubble.”

Preval announced last week that he would stay in office up to three months past the end of his term next Feb. 7 if the presidential election is delayed. Officials are struggling to hold the election as scheduled this fall. The quake destroyed the election agency’s headquarters and records and killed or displaced about 1.6 million voters.

At a news conference last week, Preval assured the public that he would leave office by May 14, 2011 — exactly five years after his delayed 2006 inauguration.

“I want to establish stability in this country,” Preval said.

While marchers were passing the crushed palace, the president was several miles away presiding as co-chairman at an election-planning meeting at the U.N. peacekeeping base.

Still, as Monday’s protest wound down, a quorum of the 29-member Senate voted to extend Preval’s term. The 99-seat lower chamber approved the measure late last week.

The entire lower house and a third of the Senate were set to be vacant at midnight Monday due to the cancellation of legislative elections slated for February, leaving a rump upper house dominated by Preval allies and a president ruling largely by decree.

In the absence of a fully functioning Parliament, the country’s recovery will be directed mostly by a commission headed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. It is to oversee $9.9 billion in foreign reconstruction money pledged at a March conference — a sum 40 percent larger than Haiti’s entire gross domestic product.

Discontent over government policy and the often unbearable smell and squalor in makeshift camps is on the rise, with scattered thunderstorms Monday drenching hundreds of thousands of people. A few thousand — only a fraction — of the homeless have been relocated to remote sites on the capital’s periphery managed by international aid groups.

“Preval has used the drama that our country went through and turned it into an opportunity for himself,” said Claudy Louis, 29, a schoolteacher. “Instead of looking out for the people, he quickly hatched a plan to benefit the small group of people around him, the bourgeoisie.”

Small bands of protesters were reported in other cities: the southern cities of Jacmel, Miragoane and Nippes, northwestern Gonaives and the northern port city of Cap-Haitien.

Other groups mixed in with the protesters, including government hires in yellow T-shirts who clutched the pickaxes and shovels they use to clear some of the quake rubble in a program overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development. They were protesting the agency’s decision to stop providing them with food as part of their compensation.

USAID dropped the free-lunch program as part of a broader effort to reduce food aid and increase local production but is continuing to pay the workers, legislative and public affairs special assistant Anna Gohmann said in an e-mail. She said discussions with site supervisors over the issue were held Monday.

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It was a silent call to arms: an easy-to-overlook message urging New Jersey students to take a stand against the budget cuts that threaten class sizes and choices as well as after-school activities. But some 18,000 students accepted the invitation posted last month on Facebook, the social media site better known for publicizing parties and sporting events. And on Tuesday many of them — and many others — walked out of class in one of the largest grass-roots demonstrations to hit New Jersey in years.

The protest disrupted classroom routines and standardized testing in some of the state’s biggest and best-known school districts, offering a real-life civics lesson that unfolded on lawns, sidewalks, parking lots and football fields.

Click here to view photos:

The mass walkouts were inspired by Michelle Ryan Lauto, an 18-year-old aspiring actress and a college freshman, and came a week after voters rejected 58 percent of school district budgets put to a vote across the state (not all districts have a direct budget vote).

“All I did was make a Facebook page,” said Ms. Lauto, who graduated last year from Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, N.J. “Anyone who has an opinion could do that and have their opinion heard. I would love to see kids in high school step up and start their own protests and change things in their own way.”

Click here to read more.

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WASHINGTON — House Democrats heard it all Saturday — words of inspiration from President Barack Obama and raucous chants of protests from demonstrators. And at times it was flat-out ugly, including some racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress.

Most of the day’s important work leading up to Sunday’s historic vote on health care was being done behind closed doors. Democratic leaders cajoled, bargained and did what they could to nail down the votes they will need to finally push Obama’s health care overhaul bill through the House.

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But much else about the day was noisy, emotional and right out in the open. After more than a year debating the capstone of Obama’s domestic agenda and just hours to go before the showdown vote, there was little holding back.

The tone was set outside the Capitol. Clogging the sidewalks and streets of Capitol Hill were at least hundreds — no official estimate was yet available — of loud, furious protesters, many of them tea party opponents of the health care overhaul.

RELATED: Right-Wing Protesters Denounce Obama In D.C.

Rallies outside the Capitol are typically orderly, with speeches and well-behaved crowds. Saturday’s was different, with anger-fueled demonstrators surrounding members of Congress who walked by, yelling at them.

“Kill the bill,” the largely middle-aged crowd shouted, surging toward lawmakers who crossed the street between their office buildings and the Capitol.

The motorcade that carried Obama to Capitol Hill to whip up support for the bill drove past crowds waving signs that read “Stop the spending” and “Get your hands out of my pocketbook and health care.” Many booed and thrust their thumbs down as Obama rode by.

As police held demonstrators back to clear areas for lawmakers outside the Capitol Obama’s speech, some protesters jeered and chanted at the officers, “You work for us.”

Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., told a reporter that as he left the Cannon House Office Building with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights era, some among the crowd chanted “the N-word, the N-word, 15 times.” Both Carson and Lewis are black, and Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones also said that it occurred.

RELATED: A Dozen People With Guns Protest Obama Speech

“It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis,” said Carson, a large former police officer who said he wasn’t frightened but worried about the 70-year-old Lewis, who is twice his age. “He said it reminded him of another time.”

Kristie Greco, spokeswoman for Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said a protester spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is black and said police escorted the lawmakers into the Capitol. Cleaver’s office said he would decline to press charges, but Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the U.S. Capitol Police said in an e-mail later: “We did not make any arrests today.”

Clyburn, who led fellow black students in integrating South Carolina’s public facilities a half century ago, called the behavior “absolutely shocking.”

“I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus,” Clyburn told reporters.

Inside House office buildings, protesters made their views known by visiting lawmakers’ offices and chanting at legislators walking by.

Among the demonstrators was Delane Stewart, 65, of Cookeville, Tenn., who had come with her husband, Jesse.

“You know what’s coming next if this happens?” she said, referring to the health bill’s passage. “They’re going to come after gun control.”

Retired businessman Randy Simpson, 67, of Seneca, S.C., also said the health bill was just a first step.

“My concerns are about the health care bill, and the direction it takes us is toward communism, quite frankly,” he said.

At a daylong meeting of the House Rules Committee, members of both parties squeezed into a tiny hearing room traded accusations in a session that was often a shouting match.

“You all in the minority know what the American people think,” Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., said loudly and mockingly at Republicans repeatedly saying the public overwhelmingly opposes Obama’s health care bill.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said a tricky voting procedure Democrats had been contemplating “corrupts and prostitutes the system” and would “unleash a cultural war in this country.”

Obama’s Capitol Hill visit was the day’s emotional peak for House Democrats as he sought to energize them to finally approve the legislation.

He conceded that it could be tough for some to vote for the bill, but predicted it would end up being politically smart because once it becomes law people will realize they like its provisions like curbs on insurance companies.

“It is in your hands,” the president said in what Clyburn later called the best speech he’d ever heard Obama make. “It is time to pass health care reform for America, and I am confident that you are going to do it tomorrow.”

Manners took quite a hit this year. Socially conservative types have bemoaned the decline of common decency for decades now, but the past 12 months have made even the most forgiving among us sit up and take notice. Here are the five newsmakers who committed this year’s most appalling public acts of impoliteness:

5) Serena Williams

When a line judge at the U.S. Semifinals made a questionable call, Williams had some choice words for her. Among them: “If I could, I would take this #^%*&! ball and shove it down your #^%*&! throat.” It didn’t stop there, as Williams continued cursing, yelling, and menacingly shaking her racket at the judge. Thanks to her unsportsmanlike conduct, she lost the match and has since been hit with an $82,500 fine.

4) Kanye West

YO SERENA I’M REALLY HAPPY FOR YOU AND I’MMA LET YOU FINISH, BUT KANYE WEST HAD ONE OF THE MOST DISRESPECTFUL OUTBURSTS OF ALL TIME. OF ALL TIME! Not only did Kanye ruin poor little Taylor Swift’s big VMA moment (and ultimately give her career a huge boost), he spawned an internet meme that’s given the masses a brand new way to disrespect one another in cyberspace. Pretty impressive fallout for a few seconds of Hennessy-fueled buffoonery.

3) Teabaggers and Town Hall Protesters

I’m all for free speech and healthy debate about the activities of our government, but these rabblerousers took the discourse entirely off the rails. You don’t have to agree with health care reform, but is it really necessary to bring guns to town hall meetings and compare the President to Hitler? And as for the protesters who ran into some trouble writing their signs — “Obama Is A Half-Breed Muslin,” “NO PUBIC OPTION!”– at least have enough respect for your adversaries to hit up the spell-check.

2) Joe Wilson

This South Carolina congressman was apparently so overcome with righteous anger that he felt the need to express himself in the middle of a presidential address to Congress. For his “You Lie!” temper tantrum, Wilson was rewarded with millions of dollars from his supporters and lots of publicity. But he didn’t get off scot-free: the House of Representatives passed a resolution reprimanding him, and the Democratic challenger for his House seat also received a windfall of cash after the outburst.

1) The Salahis

Say what you will about Joe Wilson’s outburst in Congress, but at least he was supposed to be there. The Salahis were much too hungry for reality TV fame to let little things like invitations or presidential safety get in their way, so they crashed the White House State Dinner for India’s Prime Minister. And they were so proud of their accomplishment that they posted photos of it on facebook.com to brag about the big-wigs they hobknobbed with. Their antics went beyond mere tackiness — they’ve had real consequences. “Gatecrashergate” exposed a gaping hole in the security of President Obama, landed his social secretary in hot water, and resulted in three secret service officers being placed on leave. Where the Salahis are concerned, calling them “rude” would be the understatement of the year.

Dishonorable Mention: Tiger Woods and His Ten Merry Mistresses

Unlike the rest of the shameful characters on this list, Tiger’s (many, many) disrespectful acts were initially conducted in private. But since the car accident that blew this story wide open, there’s been a never-ending stream of Tiger’s former  jump-offs looking to get their 15 minutes in the spotlight by snitching. The actions of Tiger and his ladies are not only disrespectful to his wife and children, but are an affront to common decency in general. This list would’ve been incomplete without acknowledgment of Tiger’s sordid tale.

Check out more of NewsOne’s Best & Worst of 2009 and the Decade HERE.

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From KAIT8.com:

KENNETT, MO – Supporters from across the country converged on the Dunklin County Courthouse Monday to voice public outrage against the Kennett Police Department and Dunklin County Prosecutor’s Office. Heather Ellis, 24, cut in line at the Kennett Wal-Mart on January 6, 2007 and created a disturbance after police were called, court documents said. According to court filings, Ellis assaulted two white police officers who told her to leave the premises. She was arrested on two felony counts of assaulting a police officer and two misdemeanor violations.

RELATED: Black Woman Faces 15 Years In Prison For Cutting Line At Wal-Mart

Ellis, a black school teacher in Louisiana, was in college at the time of her arrest. She charges customers and police officers as being racially disingenuous.

“Heather Ellis is innocent of all bogus charges and I demand that all charges be dropped and her record be expunged,” said Rev. Dr. Nathan Ellis, Heather’s father. “My daughter Heather is not a Dr. Jeckle out of Mrs. Hyde. She is not the Freddy Kruger that they made her out to be.”

Ellis is due in Dunklin County Circuit Court Wednesday to answer her charges. Her father said she has rejected a plea deal.

RELATED: OPINION: How We Can Work Toward Justice For Heather Ellis

“This act of tyranny was an attempt to murder her personage with the use of a lethal pen and paper,” said Ellis. “For her illegal arrest, she was accused of attacking five white police officers outside a Wal-Mart. Come on. Please, don’t try to insult my intelligence.”

A rally was held Monday afternoon in downtown Kennett. A crowd of roughly 200 people stood outside in the mist to witness what organizers named a call to action.

“We are here today because we believe in the constitution as well. It protects the individual from the persecution of the government,” said Dr. Wilmer Leon. “From the persecution of the police, some of them, not all, some of them, and the prosecutor, Mr. Sokoloff and his henchman.”

Click here to read more.

From AFP News:

WASHINGTON — Decrying Barack Obama as “white power in black face,” hundreds of African-Americans marched on the White House Saturday to protest policies of the first black US president, and demand that he bring US troops home.

More than 200 people gathered for the first public demonstration by African Americans against the Obama administration since his historic inauguration in January, and slammed the president for continuing what they described as Washington’s “imperialist” agenda around the world.

“We recognize that Barack Hussein Obama is white power in black face,” civil rights activist Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black is Back coalition which arranged the protest, called into a megaphone as the group marched outside the mansion’s gates.

“He is a tool of our imperialist enemies and we demand our freedom. And we demand that Obama withdraw all the troops from Afghanistan right now.”

Click here to read more.

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From The Herald Sun:

In 1971, Gil Scott Heron recorded, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Although the song was written during the time of the Vietnam War, Heron could have just as easily been talking about the war against gangsta-ism being waged on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), today.

RELATED on The Urban Daily: HBCU Cancels Gucci  Mane Concert

Across the country, students are protesting the fact that student funds are being used to give fat paychecks to Hip Hop artists that promote violence and disrespect of women. Every year, black institutions of higher learning, collectively, spend millions of dollars bankrolling Hip Hop homecoming shows that promote the worst kind of anti-intellectualism.

Unfortunately, except for a few Hip Hop websites and scant local media coverage, the protests have received little attention from a black community that should be rallying around such efforts to protect the minds of African American youth.

RELATED: Legendary Singer Gladys Knight Slams Hip-Hop Music

Earlier this month, students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, NC protested an appearance by rapper, Gucci Mane because of his lyrics that glorify gang life. Although, the concert is still scheduled for October 31, the students were successful in getting North Carolina A&T administrators to drop the school’s support of the show.

Now, The FAMU People’s Coalition, a group of students and community activists around the campus of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University have started a campaign against their upcoming homecoming show with the rallying call,’ You Call that a Concert?”.

Click here to read more.

“Hey, Obama, let mama marry mama” some chanted Sunday. Others cried out, “We’re out, we’re proud, we won’t back down.”

Some taking part in the National Equality March woke up energized by Obama’s promise to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military. He made that pledge in a speech Saturday night to the Human Rights Campaign, nation’s largest gay rights group.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that Congress will need to muster the resolve to change the “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” — a change that the military may be ready for.

RELATED: Obama Reaffirms Pledge To End “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

“I think it has to be done in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the military, which I think is now possible,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Joining the march were 20 cast members from the musical, “Hair.” They chose to let a Broadway matinee show go dark to come march and were led by the show’s star, Gavin Creel.

“I take him at his word,” the 33-year-old Creel said of Obama afterward. “This is just the beginning.”

Those marching listened to activists such as Cynthia Nixon, a cast member from HBO’s “Sex and the City,” who hopes to marry partner Christine Marinoni next year; and Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was killed because he was gay.

During a rally at the Capitol, keynote speaker Julian Bond — chairman of the NAACP — linked the gay rights struggle to the Civil Rights movement, saying gays and lesbians should be free from discrimination.

“Black people of all people should not oppose equality, and that is what marriage is all about,” he said. “We have a lot of real and serious problems in this country, and same-sex marriage is not one of them.

For Lt. Dan Choi, the day began with a jog around Washington’s memorials, calling cadence at 8 a.m. with fellow veterans and supporters before joining the march. A West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran, Choi is facing discharge under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for revealing in March that he is gay.

RELATED: Obama Promises To Fight For Gay Rights

He appeared later at a rally in his Army uniform, a piece of black tape over his mouth.

“Many of us have been discharged from the service because we told the truth,” he said.

Pop singer Lady Gaga, who is bisexual, got some of the biggest cheers Sunday. She didn’t perform but pledged to reject homophobia in the music industry and support her “most beautiful gay fans in the world.”

Unlike the first march in 1979 and others in 1987, 1993 and 2000 that included many celebrity performances and drew as many as 500,000 people, Sunday’s event was driven by grassroots efforts.

Washington authorities don’t disclose crowd estimates at rallies, though the crowd appeared to number in the tens of thousands, overflowing from the Capitol lawn.

Some activists doubted the march would accomplish much. They said the time and money would have been better spent working to persuade voters in Maine and Washington state, where the November ballot will include a measure that would overturn a bill granting same-sex couples many of the benefits of marriage.

A bill introducing same-sex marriage was introduced last week by the District of Columbia Council and is expected to pass.

March organizer Cleve Jones, creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and a protege of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, said he had initially discouraged a rally earlier this year. But he and others began to worry Obama was backing away from his campaign promises.

“Since we’ve seen that so many times before, I didn’t want it to happen again,” he said. “We’re not settling. There’s no such thing as a fraction of equality.”

As you probably heard, the Values Voters Summit was recently held in Washington, DC. What exactly is a values voter, and who exactly decides on the definition of a values voter?

In the Orwellian world of conservative-Republican-Christian-fringe doublespeak, the goal is to confuse, obfuscate, distort and deceive. Concepts are intentionally misnamed to suggest a completely opposite meaning. So, universal health care is characterized as “fascism”. Disdain for women’s reproductive rights is called “pro-life”. Denial of rights to same-sex couples becomes “the protection of marriage”. And rejection of evolution and the teaching of creationism in public schools fall under “religious liberty”. Given these twisted definitions of reality coming from the Far Right, it stands to reason that I am skeptical of their definition of values – presumably “family” values – or values voters for that matter.

The list of confirmed and invited guest speakers at the summit reads like a who’s who of the usual tea partying suspects: opportunistic, empty-suit G.O.P. politicians, and washed-up and recycled “rising stars” holding their finger to the wind; secessionist sympathizers and bellicose, blowhard news entertainers; immigrant haters and Obama haters; homophobic ex-beauty pageant contestants and the Bible-thumping, self-righteous moralizers and demonizers, and the like.

And who made Carrie Prejean and Mike Huckabee the experts on values? What can Sen. Jim DeMint, Bill O’Reilly or Rep. Michele Bachmann teach me on the subject of values, or anything of any importance for that matter? I’m not sure. I shall search elsewhere for my values, thank you very much.

One person I will consult is Martin Luther King. The angry mobs of his day labeled him a communist. He talked about the need for a revolution of values. Specifically, he said:

…we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

In today’s post-bubble reality called the Great Recession, Dr. King’s words resonate more than ever. As a rabbi reminded me recently in her Rosh Hashanah sermon, these days we have been forced to live with less, to make our lives fuller with less. For many Americans, it was a summer of stay-at-home vacations. People now have to dig deep within, to give more of themselves to their communities and the institutions that matter to them.

Yet during the times of plenty, although many more people were happy, empty values were allowed to thrive. Before the recession hit, Gordon Gekko and his philosophy of “greed is good” were provided a safe haven. The people who could steal the most were hailed as heroes – the best and the brightest, standard-bearers of the American Dream, the people we wanted to become. And surely, someone out there believed that they needed a fifth mansion, yacht or car to make them even happier than their first four.

Yet, in those times of empty economic calories, of massive profits extracted through paper shuffling and smoke and mirrors, there were multitudes who did not share in the wealth. These silent suffering people had been rendered invisible. The prevailing values had dictated that the wealthy few should take all of the economic spoils. The poor are as they always have been – poor and becoming even poorer. And the middle class is, at best, like the proverbial hamster on the treadmill, spinning wheels yet gaining no ground. In a worst case scenario, the people in the middle are joining the ranks of the poor, and there is no middle left. In a society that values property rights over people, families are thrown into the streets for the sake of predatory corporate profit. Everyday people must choose between paying for food, rent and health care. The sick are allowed to die because they could not afford to get sick in the first place. Young people are saddled with obscene levels of college debt, yet cannot find jobs to pay off their mortgage-sized tuition loans.

Then there’s the environment. After thousands of years of respecting the land and acting in concert with it, something has gone awry. A few weeks ago I was invited to attend the International Energy Conference at the United Nations. There was a lot of good values talk there – about green jobs, the need for sustainable sources of energy, and empowering poor communities and developing nations through renewable energy technologies. The production-consumption model of economic growth has run its course. Taking, making and wasting for the needs of 1 billion people – at the expense of the remaining 5 billion – has damaged the Earth’s ecosystems, depleted its natural resources, and fueled political instability around the globe. “Oh, mercy mercy me. Oh, things ain’t what they used to be” as Marvin Gaye used to sing. “Oil wasted on the oceans and upon our seas. Fish full of mercury.”

I can guarantee that the participants in the Values Voters Summit did not hold these family values in high regard–of social, economic or environmental justice — even though they claim to be religious and know God personally.

Apparently, there are many types of values out there, or at least they are packaged and promoted as such. To be sure, no one should claim a monopoly on them. But in the end, we must decide which values are meaningful to us, and which values should guide our government and our society. We can find values anywhere, including a down-and-dirty, anti-Obama tea party, or at the white-collar, business suit version that just took place in Washington. That does not mean we want to claim them as our own.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

via Getty Images

“Demonstrators try to escape from police after interfering with city workers who were hanging an Olympic banner on the Picasso statue in Daley Plaza, reflecting the city’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics,September 29, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. About five people were arrested after more than 15 police cars responded to the incident. The International Olympic Committee is scheduled to announce October 2 which city will be selected to host the games.”

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ROUND UP: Obama And Congress Content With Politics As Usual

From Politico:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently invoked the grim specter of political violence, arguing that today’s angry political climate could cause people to cross the line from heated talk to dangerous actions.

Republicans sharply rejected her claim, with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) saying Pelosi is “living in another world.” Others charged that the California Democrat herself stoked emotions by labeling some health reform protesters “un-American.”

RELATED: Census Worker Hanged In Apparent Anti-Government Violence

But it’s not just Pelosi who is worried. In interviews with POLITICO, five former Secret Service, FBI and CIA officers say that they, too, are concerned that today’s climate of supercharged political vitriol could lead to violence.

And this week, the FBI said that it is investigating whether anti-government sentiment played a role in the death of a U.S. Census worker who was found hanged from a tree in rural Kentucky, because the body had the word “fed” scrawled on the chest — though authorities say there are too many unanswered questions at this point to rule the case a homicide or a hate crime. Beyond any specific case, some of the experts see the political moment as a part of a larger trend that’s been developing since the mid-’90s — dating back to GOP attacks on President Bill Clinton and continuing through the left’s sharp criticism of President George W. Bush, who was called a “liar” and “loser” by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

RELATED: Obama Has More Threats Than Any Other President-Elect

This summer’s protests against health care included an episode where freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. (D-Md.) was hanged in effigy. Anti-energy bill protesters tarred and feathered an effigy of Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.). Last Halloween, a homeowner in liberal West Hollywood hanged in effigy Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin at his home. There’s a big difference, of course, between a person who shouts at a congressman at a town hall and a person who would do something much more violent. But security experts say that the shouting incidents and other angry moments in recent weeks serve as indicators of an increase in political rage in the culture. That rage comes against a backdrop of enormous changes in American life. The United States suffered a humiliating economic collapse that threatens its long-term position as the world’s most important economy, with a staggering 9.7 percent unemployment rate. President Barack Obama made several controversial federal interventions into the private sector. At the same time, the country has elected its first African-American president at a moment when dramatic demographic changes mean that the groups now considered racial minorities will account for the majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042.

That kind of sweeping social change can be deeply unsettling.

“Times of threat bring increased aggression,” said Jerrold Post, a CIA veteran who founded the agency’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior during his 21-year career at headquarters in Langley, Va.

“And the whole country’s under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization,” said Post, now a professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University. “The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there’s a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action.”

New Rule: You can’t complain about health care reform if you’re not willing to reform your own health. Unlike most liberals, I’m glad all those teabaggers marched on Washington last week. Because judging from the photos, it’s the first exercise they’ve gotten in years. Not counting, of course, all the Rascal scooters there, most of which aren’t even for the disabled. They’re just Americans who turned 60 and said, “Screw it, I’m done walking.” These people are furious at the high cost of health care, so they blame illegals, who don’t even get health care. News flash, Glenn Beck fans: the reason health care is so expensive is because you’re all so unhealthy.

Yes, it was fun this week to watch the teabaggers complain how the media underestimated the size of their march, “How can you say there were only 60,000 of us? We filled the entire mall!” Yes, because you’re fat. One whale fills the tank at Sea World, that doesn’t make it a crowd.

RELATED: Study Shows Blacks Are Fattest Racial Group

President Obama has identified all the problems with the health care system, but there’s one tiny issue he refuses to tackle, and that’s our actual health.

And since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol — and alcohol actually serves a useful function in society in that it enables unattractive people to get laid, which is more than you can say for Skittles.

RELATED: How To Create A Fat Free Hood

I’m not saying tax all soda, but certainly any single serving of soda larger than a baby is not unreasonable. If you don’t know whether you burp it or it burps you, that’s too big. We need to make taking care of ourselves an issue of patriotism. If you were someone who condemned Bush for not asking Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, the same must be said for Obama and health care.

Click here to read more.

[SOURCE: Huffington Post]

From The Root:

Never mind Joe Wilson and the tea baggers. You know who really ought to be breaking congressional decorum and marching on Washington about health care? Black people. We ought to be so angry about the disastrous health care system that we disrupt society at every level until it gets fixed.

Why? Well, don’t expect our post-race president to make the point, but nowhere are the festering wounds of race in America more visible than in our broken health care system. From cancer to infant mortality,  its disparate outcomes across racial lines are staggering.

Right-wing advocates worked hard during the Bush years to frame them as the results of individual choices, and surely, we all need to do a far better job of taking care of ourselves. But it’s also plain that racial disparities in health cut too profoundly across too many illnesses to be dismissed as solely about bad behavior. You name the illness, and blacks are more likely to get it and less likely to survive with it.

Here’s a list of ills to boil your blood and get you shouting at your own congressional representatives.

10 reasons black people should be mad as hell about the health care status quo.

1. Uninsured. Forty percent of black Americans reported being uninsured for some portion of 2007-2008, compared to 1 in 4 whites. And it’s not just about income, nearly a quarter of blacks making more than $84,000 a year lacked coverage at some point, compared to 16 percent of whites in that income bracket.

2. Early death. If black America were its own country, it would rank 105th in the world for life expectancy, behind places like Algeria, the Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka. We’re barely in the developing world.

3. Infant mortality. Black infants are 2.5 times more likely to die than white newborns. Again, if black America were its own country, we’d rank 88th in infant mortality rates. (Hat tip to my Black AIDS Institute colleagues for the global comparisons.)

4. Cancer. It’s the second-leading cause of death in America, but that means more to some than others—the black male death rate is 37 percent higher than whites and the black female rate is 17 percent higher.

5. Breast and cervical cancer. Black women are twice as likely to die from cervical cancer as whites and while breast cancer deaths are dropping for whites, black women continue to die at higher rates than anybody else. Why? No preventive care to catch cancer early enough to treat it.

Click here to read more.

From the Guardian:

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Washington at the weekend in the largest manifestation yet of the angry anti-Obama sentiment being whipped up among rightwing Republicans.

Bearing flags saying “Don’t tread on me!”, “Enough, enough” and “I’m not your ATM”, they descended on the capital on Saturday from all corners of the country to denounce what they believe is the administration’s march towards socialism.

The protesters vented their spleens over a wide range of targets, from conservative staples such as perceived high taxes and big government, through President Barack Obama’s plans to reform health care, to more extreme portrayals of Obama as a terrorist or a Hitler figure. The depiction of the administration as socialist or communist was a unifying theme.

Marchers took three hours to walk from the White House to Capitol Hill, and the crowd that assembled on the west lawn of the Capitol spilled out on to the National Mall.

Democratic commentators were quick to dismiss the protest as the ranting of an intensely motivated but electorally marginal rightwing alliance. The Obama administration is intent on pressing ahead with selling health reform to the US public, despite all the rightwing noise.

Click here to read more.