Category: Archive

Crossposted at Approximately 8,000 Words

Today I join Occupy Austin and members of Occupy San Antonio (in its newest incarnation as Occupy Bexar) travel to Addison, Texas with a wide coalition of unions and activist organizations at the Out of the Shadows Rally and March. This protest is a demand for transparency and accountability in the negotiations of the TransPacific Partnership (on Twitter, #TPP, hijacking the hashtag of the ‘Tea Party Patriots”).

This is the latest secret deal being cut by the 1% and world leaders. Over 30 legal professionals begged US Trade Representative Ron Kirk to make the process more transparent:

We write as legal academics from the US and current or potential future Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) member countries to express our profound concern and disappointment at the lack of public participation, transparency and open government processes in the negotiation of the intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). We are particularly and specifically concerned that the United States Trade Representative (USTR) took the opportunity of its hosting of the latest round of negotiations in Dallas, Texas, to begin this week, to further restrict public involvement in the negotiations by eliminating the full-day stakeholder forums that have been hosted at other rounds. We call on the USTR and all TPP negotiating countries to reverse course and work instead to expand, rather than contract, the opportunities for public engagement in the formation of the TPP’s intellectual property chapter.

Kirk blew them off. The agreement would be wide-ranging in its influence, affecting environmental law, jobs, and more, but it is the intellectual property and copyright portions which are raising the most ire on the Internet among activists and Anonymous. Like the similar ACTA, they see TPP as another round in the retaliation from the 1% over the defeat of laws like SOPA & PIPA. If they can’t be forced through Congress, it seems they’ll be turned into global mandate instead. Activists are further angered by the obscure choice of meeting location which is seen as another way to avoid scrutiny.

The bus from San Antonio and Austin will arrive in the Dallas suburb this afternoon. where we meet at a park and march on the negotiation site. This event is permitted, but I’ve heard reports from those already on site that police seem nervous; we will see how they react if there are acts of civil disobedience.

Occupy Austin’s livestream will be active around 2pm Central Time (12pm FDL time). I will livetweet throughout the day, and update this blog when I am able.

Late Tuesday I got a call from members of Occupy Wall Street NYC along with some San Antonio occupiers. After some drama within their ranks,…

Apologies for the silence here. Things have been so full during the last week it was hard to stop to document it — from getting…

For the past few weeks I’ve participated in an online discussion for citizen journalists and livestreamers working within the Occupy movement. It’s been an enlightening experience — the topics are almost always interesting, dealing with everything from how to stay safe during police violence to the ever tricky balance between the need for transparency and the need for personal privacy.

Just as Occupy itself highlights how our problems are global, conversations like these show the common ground we all share as citizen journalists. All groups are struggling with the pull between transparency as a core value & the rising call for “security culture” and hiding our actions from the police & government agencies who monitor us. And everyone is looking toward Chicago this spring, and wondering what the state’s unconstitutional laws against recording public officials mean for us.

Below the cut you’ll find my tweets from the meeting, which form a sort of minutes. You can also download a recording of the roundtable.

Last week, Crumbelina from the Tyranny of Beauty online radio show interviewed me about Occupy Austin. Tune in to the program today, which starts at 1pm, to hear my interview.