The city government of Oakland, California, destroyed an entire community -- two weeks old but a truer community than many in the city, founded on the Constitutional right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances -- on the pretext that improving sanitary conditions required violence against people and destruction of property.

Civil rights activist Catrina Wallace, who received national attention for her role in organizing protests around the Jena Six case, was convicted today of three counts of distribution of a controlled substance. Wallace, who is 30, became an activist after her brother, Robert Bailey, was arrested and charged with attempted murder for a school fight. Bailey and five others later became known as the Jena Six. Their case eventually brought 50,000 people on a march through the town of Jena, and as a result of the public pressure the six young men were eventually freed. The six young men are all now in college or - in the case of the youngest - on their way.

Read: Jena Six Activist Convicted, Faces Decades in Prison

And more, also from a person from the Louisiana Justice Institute

Police use of unnecessary force reframes public discussion away from critical analysis of the way things are run now, Legba Carrefour reports (republished on Douglas Rushkoff's blog). As part of this there has been an apparent targeting of media and support groups. Carrefour writes that police set up:

Officials and NGO representatives from the Guatemalan state of Petén flew to the capital "for an impromptu meeting with President Álvaro Colóm, who is unveilling a proposal that he says will promote forest conservation on a grand scale," Michael Stoll reports from Guatemala.