DEFEND THE OAKLAND 25 - MORE PHOTOS

Having just moved to Los Angeles, CA from the East Village in New York City, NY, it is very disturbing to come to learn about this most obvious reprisal against free speach, and the right to peacefull assembly. Are we now living in a society that is controlled by whatever the media disperses as news? Are we now content with this status quo? Why did we not hear about this incident on the front page of the Village Voice, New York Times, Post, or Daily News? The American public was and is being "sold" on the idea of war by selective media news allocation. It is imperative that our society remains informed of all the truth, not just small, select portions. News is no longer a journalistic endeavor, it is an advertising and public relations enterprise. We now have spin doctors. We didn't have spin doctors back in the '70's when Woodward and Bernstein were investigating Watergate. We didn't have spin doctors trying to convince the people that Nixon may have been wronged, a victim. We had the accusers, and their evidence, and the accused with his defense. America was left to use its brain and decide for itself what the facts meant, of what they were indicative, and if the accused was guilty. We made our choice, spoke out, let our House Representatives and Senators know what we expected from them, and, in the most democratic act in all of American history, the people, acting through congress, ousted a president through our own rule of law and justice called the Constitution of the United Stated of America.

We no longer speak as a people. We listen and remain complacent, content with the status quo, not realizing the ongoing errosion of our very freedoms that we hold so dear.

We no longer act as a single force for right. And we cannot. Our ignorance, complacency, and resulting mass apathy have stimied our evolution as a culture, as an educated society, and as a force for truth and right in this world. We are no longer neither respected nor even feared in the world. We are the joke, the laughingstock of the international community. We have become the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkey that, back in the '70's, we so greatly feared.

We no longer think for ourselves, united by the cause of keeping freedom truly alive and bettering our great society, and the lot of all human kind. We listen and remain so apathetic, that we are content to be told what to think. We are so mesmorized by the media that we cannot form analytical thoughts. As lemmings led to the edge of the cliff, we are hynotized by a media that empowers itself through our own total apathy, ignorance, and divisiveness.

All of this has led to the violence we now see purpetuated on these peaceful protestors that are villified in the popular press as anti Americans. This is the result of apathy, complacence and ignorance. We distort average Americans participating in the rights this country stands for into a near treasonous acts. Students studying at a bastion of democratic thought and learning, UC Berkeley, are now being severely punished for exercising the very freedoms about which they are being taught. How has it come to this? We did nothing to identify this problem, and then stop it. But a better question is "what is the solution?".

It starts with the people..."of the people, for the people, and by the people" are words long forgotten, replaced by soundbites. A small group who realize the real peril is not Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or Yassir Arafat or Ariel Sharon or George W. Bush. The real peril is our own apathy. We need to energize our family, our friends, our neighbors, our classmates and workmates into thinking for themselves. The campaign to take back our own thoughts must begin now. We need to ditch sound bite journalism and replace it with a new breed of people like Edward R. Murrow, Eric Severied, and Walter Cronkite, with whom we need not totally agree, but with whom we need to think again, and who can provoke in us critical, analytical thought; a joint effort to bring the American people back to the habit of thinking for themselves.

The rights our ancestors fought for, whether at Valley Forge with General Washington, on the bloodied plain of Gettysburg, or by the persecution or poverty in their own country of origin that brought them to these shores of liberty, are now tarnished by the Patriot Act, by a second war in Iraq, and by a journalistic community that prides itself on its own popularity, and how much money it makes, rather than on the content of their endeavor. Let the thoughts of a brilliant president who never had a real formal education ring true in our hearts once again "of the people, for the people, and by the people".

Having just moved to Los Angeles, CA from the East Village in New York City, NY, it is very disturbing to come to learn about this most obvious reprisal against free speach, and the right to peacefull assembly. Are we now living in a society that is controlled by whatever the media disperses as news? Are we now content with this status quo? Why did we not hear about this incident on the front page of the Village Voice, New York Times, Post, or Daily News? The American public was and is being "sold" on the idea of war by selective media news allocation. It is imperative that our society remains informed of all the truth, not just small, select portions. News is no longer a journalistic endeavor, it is an advertising and public relations enterprise. We now have spin doctors. We didn't have spin doctors back in the '70's when Woodward and Bernstein were investigating Watergate. We didn't have spin doctors trying to convince the people that Nixon may have been wronged, a victim. We had the accusers, and their evidence, and the accused with his defense. America was left to use its brain and decide for itself what the facts meant, of what they were indicative, and if the accused was guilty. We made our choice, spoke out, let our House Representatives and Senators know what we expected from them, and, in the most democratic act in all of American history, the people, acting through congress, ousted a president through our own rule of law and justice called the Constitution of the United Stated of America.

We no longer speak as a people. We listen and remain complacent, content with the status quo, not realizing the ongoing errosion of our very freedoms that we hold so dear.

We no longer act as a single force for right. And we cannot. Our ignorance, complacency, and resulting mass apathy have stimied our evolution as a culture, as an educated society, and as a force for truth and right in this world. We are no longer neither respected nor even feared in the world. We are the joke, the laughingstock of the international community. We have become the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkey that, back in the '70's, we so greatly feared.

We no longer think for ourselves, united by the cause of keeping freedom truly alive and bettering our great society, and the lot of all human kind. We listen and remain so apathetic, that we are content to be told what to think. We are so mesmorized by the media that we cannot form analytical thoughts. As lemmings led to the edge of the cliff, we are hynotized by a media that empowers itself through our own total apathy, ignorance, and divisiveness.

All of this has led to the violence we now see purpetuated on these peaceful protestors that are villified in the popular press as anti Americans. This is the result of apathy, complacence and ignorance. We distort average Americans participating in the rights this country stands for into a near treasonous acts. Students studying at a bastion of democratic thought and learning, UC Berkeley, are now being severely punished for exercising the very freedoms about which they are being taught. How has it come to this? We did nothing to identify this problem, and then stop it. But a better question is "what is the solution?".

It starts with the people..."of the people, for the people, and by the people" are words long forgotten, replaced by soundbites. A small group who realize the real peril is not Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or Yassir Arafat or Ariel Sharon or George W. Bush. The real peril is our own apathy. We need to energize our family, our friends, our neighbors, our classmates and workmates into thinking for themselves. The campaign to take back our own thoughts must begin now. We need to ditch sound bite journalism and replace it with a new breed of people like Edward R. Murrow, Eric Severied, and Walter Cronkite, with whom we need not totally agree, but with whom we need to think again, and who can provoke in us critical, analytical thought; a joint effort to bring the American people back to the habit of thinking for themselves.

The rights our ancestors fought for, whether at Valley Forge with General Washington, on the bloodied plain of Gettysburg, or by the persecution or poverty in their own country of origin that brought them to these shores of liberty, are now tarnished by the Patriot Act, by a second war in Iraq, and by a journalistic community that prides itself on its own popularity, and how much money it makes, rather than on the content of their endeavor. Let the thoughts of a brilliant president who never had a real formal education ring true in our hearts once again "of the people, for the people, and by the people".