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Thursday, January 26, 2023

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Watch on YouTube here: Opponents of Philly FDR Park Development Speak Out
Via Christian Gasper

Opponents of Philly FDR Park Development Speak Out

Philadelphia, PA – The FDR Park in South Philly is in the midst of a new redevelopment plan supported by the city and private groups like Fairmount Park Conservancy. Opponents of the plan have dubbed their cause “Save the Meadows,” referencing a wild area that was partly bulldozed late in 2022. The plan’s authors are finally hosting a community event on January 26, 2023, although opponents believe that they will not be allowed to speak inside.

A demonstration outside the Grand Yesha Ballroom in South Philly is highlighting reasons they oppose the plan. An ad-hoc coalition of several groups, under the flag “The People’s Plan for FDR Park,” has pushed local officials to reconsider the plan and preserve more meadows while unlocking often-shuttered sports fields around the city.

Among the main concerns opponents have is that the expansion of the Philadelphia International Airport will remove wetlands near the town of Eastwick, which can thus expect more flooding as climate change intensifies. (The airport’s expansion is a key part of the financing of the FDR Park project.)

Live coverage below:

See our video report from last fall below:

Opposition to the development plan was also an element in a large demonstration and march in November 2022 that highlighted several different, yet related causes in the city.

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The post Opponents of Philly FDR Park Development Speak Out appeared first on UNICORN RIOT.

by Unicorn Riot via UNICORN RIOT

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Watch on YouTube here: Opponents of Philly FDR Park Development Speak Out
Via Christian Gasper

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Watch on YouTube here: An Inside Look at the Samatar Encampment Eviction which left 100 Displaced Mid-Winter
Via Christian Gasper

Samatar Encampment Eviction Leaves 100 Displaced Mid-Winter

Minneapolis, MN – The largest encampment of unhoused people in Minneapolis was evicted on Wednesday, Jan. 18, following a recent shooting which left 27-year-old Adnan Mohamed Ali dead. The Samatar Encampment in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood (also playfully known as ‘House of Balls Encampment,’ named after a business located across the street) had represented a sense of stability for about 100 residents, many of whom have very few resources.

Residents were given a “24 Hour” notice on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 17, that they must be vacated by 9 a.m. the following morning. Many people were told verbally by Hennepin County outreach workers that they would transport tents, furniture, and other belongings to an offsite storage facility, but no such help ever came. Instead, residents were offered 20 Gallon ziplock bags by members of the State Department of Transportation (MnDOT), whose jurisdiction the land is under.

Adding to the confusion, residents weren’t given a clear answer, when asking where they could go as an alternative. Many were quick to point out that shelter beds are notoriously unavailable, and when they do open up, many times it’s just a mat on the floor which you have to be in no later than 9 p.m., and leave by as early as 6 a.m. This can lead to issues for the many residents who have regular employment, and couples who get separated once inside shelters – oftentimes without phones to locate one another.

During the eviction, the scene became hostile as community encampment defenders faced off with contractors who were tasked with clearing out the camp.

One person was forcibly arrested by multiple Minnesota State Patrol troopers while demanding they cancel the scheduled displacement. The person arrested, who wished to remain anonymous, told Unicorn Riot in a written statement that they were shocked and horrified to see what they felt was “inhumane” treatment by the authorities who left unhoused people “huddled under a bridge with no shelter, hungry, and cold.”

“I found the sheer quantity of people who needed those tents (I would guess over a hundred) and the intensive amount of State Patrol (I would guess at least 50) totally shocking and absolutely making a very bad problem worse. To hear about those same people huddled under a bridge with no shelter, hungry, and cold… is shocking … Horrifyingly inhumane and I’ll forget seeing this.”

During the eviction, housing activist, DJ, recorded workers from Big Top Contracting threatening to “beat [them] like a slave.”

Big Top Contracting, Inc. is owned by Alfonzo Williams, the CFO of the Agape Movement, a group centered around George Floyd Square who became known for helping the city to move barricades at the Square on June 3, 2021. Agape has been partnered with the city and paid by the Minneapolis Office of Violence Prevention for community “engagement.” Some local activists have called them a counter-insurgency force or collaborators, while others have welcomed them.

Meanwhile, Big Top continues to play ‘clean-up crew’ for MnDOT. During an attempted eviction of an encampment off I-35W last summer, Williams was recorded initiating an aggressive sequence of events by ordering his crew of workers to start uprooting tents, some of which were housing people at the time.

Aside from threatening community members during last week’s eviction, the young group of ten Big Top contractors were tasked with destroying tents and collecting biohazardous materials at times.

Other contractors wearing jackets marked with “Lookout Flagging” also performed tasks onsite. A 2022 Minneapolis Public Housing Authority project manual (PDF) lists a “Pride Cleanup LLC” doing business as “Lookout Flagging Services” led by John Pride, and a website for Pride Cleanup lists Lookout Flagging as a sister company. MnDOT’s “Traffic Control Supervisor certified list” and a Minneapolis “Memorandum to Bidders and Proposers” (PDF) reference the companies.

The eviction fell one day before yet another major storm swept through the Twin Cities, marking a pattern of displacements during major weather events. Many of the residents have expressed that encampments bring a sense of community and safety in numbers. As opposed to trying to survive individually, they pool resources and many camps have their own rules to minimize disturbances, as a show of good faith as neighbors. Now forced into the street with none of their belongings, people reported having nowhere to go.

This eviction comes just 19 days after the eviction of the longstanding Quarry encampment.

Niko Georgiades contributed to this report for Unicorn Riot.

About the author: Aaron Johnson is a street journalist and filmmaker currently filming ‘They Sleep Among Us’ – a documentary about Minneapolis unhoused encampments. Follow on Instagram: theysleepamongus.

Unicorn Riot's 2020-22 Unhoused Crisis in Minneapolis:

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The post Samatar Encampment Eviction Leaves 100 Displaced Mid-Winter appeared first on UNICORN RIOT.

by Unicorn Riot via UNICORN RIOT

Monday, January 23, 2023

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Watch on YouTube here: Statement from Greek Anarchists Read During a Vigil for Manuel Teran in Minneapolis
Via Christian Gasper

Ancient Antiquities Discovered in Palestine’s Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip, Palestine – Two major discoveries in 2022 showcase thousands of years of Arab existence on Palestinian lands.

A 4,500-year-old statue of the Canaanite goddess Anat and a 1,500-year-old tiled mosaic floor were both separately found last year in the Gaza Strip, a coastal area of 140 square miles sandwiched between Israel and Egypt off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and teeming with tales of history.

4,500-Year-Old Canaanite Statue of the Goddess of Love

While cultivating his land, a farmer unearthed an ancient Canaanite statue of what experts say depicts the Goddess Anat. Found in the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, the statue with only a head, stands a bit over eight inches tall (21cm) and is made of limestone.

A serpent is attached to the crown of the head of the statue to represent strength and invincibility. According to Canaanite mythology and belief, Anat was the goddess of love, beauty and war.

Researcher and historian Walid Al-Akkad, owner of the Al-Akkad Museum in Khan Yunis, said that the snake on the head of the statue indicated “strength and love and is evidence of the strength of the Canaanite civilization in that era.”

The Director General of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in Gaza, Jamal Abu Rida, said the statue is 4,500-years-old and dates back to the Canaanite period of 2,500 BCE.

The discovery occurred in the Sheikh Hamouda area of Khan Yunis, an archaeological site in the east of Khan Yunis that was the ancient commercial land route for successive civilizations in Palestine.

Al-Akkad added that the area in which the statue was found is considered a high mound, inhabited by many civilizations. In the same area Akkad had previously found a coffin made of soft lead weighing 231 pounds (105 kilograms) and containing coins dating back to the Byzantine period.

“No other statue resembles this one in Gaza City,” said Nariman Khaleh the Director of Qasr al-Basha, the Pasha’s Palace Museum in Gaza City, where the ancient statue is now on display.

1,500-Year-Old Complex Floor Mosaic

Also in 2022, just a half a mile from the Israeli border in the Gaza Strip, another Palestinian farmer made an amazing discovery. In his backyard, he found a well-preserved and vividly colored mosaic floor likely from the period between the fifth and seventh centuries.

The well-preserved pavement includes 17 iconic images of beasts and birds.

“These are the most beautiful mosaic floors ever discovered in Gaza, both in terms of the quality of the graphic representation and the complexity of the geometry,” said Rene Elter, an archaeologist from the French School of the Bible and Archeology in Jerusalem.

Elter said proper excavations should be carried out to determine exactly when it was built and whether it was part of a religious or secular complex.

The British Encyclopedia defines “Canaan” as something that is “always cent[ered] on Palestine.” They further note that Palestine was inhabited by Canaanites of Semitic origins before the Israelis, and that the name Canaan and the Canaanites appeared in Egyptian and Phoenician cuneiform writings since about the fifteenth century BCE. The encyclopedia adds that the credit for our knowledge of the history of Canaan is due to archaeological discoveries as well as ancient blogs such as the Amarna letters.

According to the American archaeologist James Henry Breasted (pdf), the Canaanites are one of the Arab tribes that have settled in Palestine since the year 2,500 BCE. The ancient civilizations of Canaan and Phoenicia, both of Semitic Arab origin, settled in Palestine and Lebanon through a single migration that set out from the Arabian Peninsula in the third millennium BC.

The Canaanite civilization also extended to the Syrian regions, such as Ras Shamra (Ugarit), which is one of the important Canaanite civilization centers since the first half of the second millennium BCE, as well as the Kingdom of Ebla near Aleppo.

Neither of the discoveries noted above takes away the fact that others have lived in these lands for centuries as well. Jewish people maintain their ties to this land go back 3,700 years.

The Gaza Strip was a busy trade route between Egypt and the Levant in ancient times and is full of remnants of ancient civilizations, from the Early Bronze Age to the Islamic and Ottoman eras.

Yet, despite being a land so rich in history and archaeological areas dating back centuries, treasures of ancient civilizations are rarely protected in Palestine. An ongoing Israeli siege on Gaza and repeated bombings by Israeli forces over the last decades have negatively impacted archaeological sites and the ability to excavate. Intersecting with these attacks is the lack of concern by the ruling parties in Palestine, which negatively affect antiquities and therefore tourism in the Gaza Strip.

Found by farmers, the two discoveries of 2022 have helped push the conversation on providing better protection for antiquities in Gaza.

With several groupings of fragile sites threatened by a lack of awareness and resources, as well as the continuing danger of conflict between Israel and local Palestinian militants, many are hoping humanity can prevail in saving relics of the old world.

Niko Georgiades contributed to this report for Unicorn Riot.

Unicorn Riot's Coverage from Palestine:

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The post Ancient Antiquities Discovered in Palestine’s Gaza Strip appeared first on UNICORN RIOT.

LuchaKliq.com

Thursday, January 26, 2023

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Opponents of Philly FDR Park Development Speak Out

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization:

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Samatar Encampment Eviction Leaves 100 Displaced Mid-Winter

Unicorn Riot's 2020-22 Unhoused Crisis in Minneapolis:

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization:

Monday, January 23, 2023

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)

Ancient Antiquities Discovered in Palestine’s Gaza Strip

4,500-Year-Old Canaanite Statue of the Goddess of Love

1,500-Year-Old Complex Floor Mosaic

Unicorn Riot's Coverage from Palestine:

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization:

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