PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

About 180 gathered in New Castle, PA on the weekend of the 23rd to listen to fellow townspeople speak out against the war on Iraq, including this protestor who dressed as Abraham Lincoln. The protest was organized primarily by the Westminster College Green Party. Small towns across the country have become increasingly outspoken in their resistance to the war.

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A small crowd protested INS's special registration of immigrants, at 12:30 on Friday afternoon (February 21, 2003) at the Federal Bldg. at Liberty Ave. and Grant St.

Speakers included Saleh Waziruddin of Jamaat for Justice; Vic Walczak, Executive Director of the Greater Pgh. ACLU; Michael Bartko of the American Muslim Council; and Rev. Linda Theophilus of Emmanuel Lutheran Church. After speeches, Adel Fergany led a prayer.

Similar protests have been held at Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) offices in cities across the US. In Southern California alone, more than 1,000 of those who registered in Southern California alone were detained on mainly minor or paperwork violations.

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Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Uniontown, Fayette County, to protest the police killing of 12 year old Michael Ellerbe and the handling of the case by authorities afterward.

Ellerbe was shot by a state trooper after stealing an SUV and leading the trooper and his partner on a chase on Christmas Eve. When the twelve-year-old crashed the vehicle and fled on foot, the troopers pursued. One trooper fell and his gun discharged, and the other, allegedly thinking the boy had fired the gun, shot and killed the boy. Ellerbe was unarmed.

Relatives of the slain boy, along with hundreds of community members and activists, spoke out against the way the case was handled, accusing state police of a cover-up. The trooper who fired the fatal shots is not being charged.

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Local students are preparing to strike and put on a day of workshops and teach in one day after the bombing of Iraq is escalated by the United States. Workshops planned include War and Mass Media, Women in War Resistance, Creative Resistance, Food Not Bombs, and direct action trainings. Other activities are still in the works.

The strike activities are slated to take place on the University of Pittsburgh campus, and students from all local universities and high schools, as well as non-students, are welcome to take part.

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Pittsburgher Tom Blancato was among protestors sentenced Wednesday on charges of trespassing at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) in Fort Benning, Georgia. The protest, which occurs each year on November 17, is organized by the School of the Americas Watch and marks the 1989 killing of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. The 2002 protest brought as many as 10,000 protestors to Fort Benning.

Many charge that WHISC, formerly known as the School of the Americas, is a training ground for terrorists sponsored by the United Sates government. The school was reopened under the current name in 2001, but Amnesty International and others argue that the change was merely cosmetic. Graduates of the school have been linked to human rights atrocities throughout Central and South America, including the murder of the six Jesuit priests in 1989. In 1996 the Pentagon admitted that training manuals used at the school advocated the use of torture, extortion, and execution.

In all, 85 protestors were arrested during the November 17 protests. Some of the demonstrators, who included priests, nuns, veterans, and students, chose to plea bargain rather than face a trial, but many of those who chose to go to trial were handled over just three days at a Federal court in Georgia.

Blancato, 40 years old with a family, received a sentence of 1 year of probation and a fine of $1,000 in addition to 250 hours of community service. Some received heavier sentences that included as much as six months of jail time.

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