On the 12th of October, climate and Indigenous centric protests against the Fall 2022 meetings of the IMF and World Bank began. First up was an evening bike ride from Murrow Park in front of the World Bank to DAR Constitution Hall. Plenty of cops were there but there was seemingly no other activity in or around the building. The G20 Climate and Energy Ministers were supposed to be having a fancy dinner there but seemed to be absent, presumably due to the presence of protesters.

On the eve of the IMF and World Bank’s Fall 2022 meetings, Code Pink got inside the World Bank’s headquarters and dropped a “Cancel All Debt” banner before being escorted out.

On Indigenous People’s Day, the 10th of October, Declare Emergency and fifteen Indigenous activists from Minnesota sat down on the Capitol Beltway in almost the same place protesters had blocked it on July 4. The road was blocked nearly an hour. Again many were arrested.

Declare Emergency is demanding that President Biden declare a national climate emergency(as he ALMOST did a while back), and then back it up by halting all fossil fuel extraction on federal and indigenous lands.

In Minnesota, Enbridge wants to ram the Line 5 tar sands pipeline through some indigenous lands and and where they cannot they have diverted around one reservation but are endangering the water supply there by crossing the same river. All this is so Canadian tar sands “oil” can be refined and exported globally. Like the defeated Keystone XL that was intended only for export other than to the US, Line 5 literally has “nothing to do with the price of gas” at US gas stations. Even if it did, part of that “price of gas” would be paid by people who don’t even drive but have to drink poisoned water after a tar sands spill.

Line 5 has to do with the price of gas elsewhere in the world-and with the income of Enbridge’s investors. It has been estimated (years ago) that if all road subsidies were ended, the price of all wars fought over oil included, and all environmental harm from burning gasoline were included in the price at the pump, gas would sell for over $20 a gallon.

One of a great many Indigenous People’s Day events was held on the Mall in Washington DC near 3ed st SW.

So-called “Columbus Day” is NOT, and as Jay Winter Nightwolf explained at the rally, that was not even his real name. Instead of celebrating a rapist and murderer who was almost halfway around the world from where he thought he was (as lost as is possible), more and more folks now celebrate Indigenous People’s Day in October.

Chasing away Fascists/MAGAts/fash media/theocrats

Protest at Kavanaugh’s house as all 6 antichoice “justices” get home demos same night

Update Oct 8, late night: Simultanious protests held at homes of all 6 antichoice Supreme Court “Justices”

On the 8th of October, the Women’s March returned to Capitol Hill for another mass march against SCOTUS’s decision to scuttle Roe Vs Wade and permit about half the US to ban abortion outright. At least two groups of counterprotesters and several far-right media teams(notably the Daily Signal) were driven away by more militant protesters.

One protester was arrested but released shortly later, it is possible this arrest (by Capitol Police) was intended as a diversion to pull protesters away from the fundamentalist Christians.

The Women’s March was held exactly one month before the 2022 mid-term election. Many fear that this election may be the very last chance to keep the US from turning into a dictatorship led by Trump or DeSantis. This is due to the large number of pro-Trump candidates for state Secretaries of State, who certify election results. Trump bragged in a speech over the weekend that “we get our country back” meaning that the GOP could never again be defeated, if these thugs get into office. A return to power of the GOP in both houses of Congress would also nearly guarantee that Trump or Desantis could steal the 2024 election. At that point the GOP would control both houses of Congress plus the White House and abortion would probably become a Federal felony, affecting all 50 states. Even international travel for abortion might be criminalized, with existing laws governing overseas “Sex tourism” as the legal precedent.

Photo by MoCO County Council candidate Kristin Mink

On the 8th of October, the Proud Boys may have taken advantage of the Women’s March keeping activists busy to disrupt an undefended Drag Queen Story Hour reading event for children in Brookside Gardens.

The Proud Boys are violent terrorists are known for beatings of random civilians on the streets of DC after the tumultious Nov 14 and Dec 12 2020 pro-Trump rallies challenging the 2020 election outcome. They are most famous of all for their role in the Jan 6 2021 assault on th US Capitol, again as part of Donald Trump’s failed attempt to override his electoral loss in Nov 2020.

Marchers call Barrett “a politician in a robe” (10 sec by Our Rights DC)

On the 7th of October, yet another protest at “Justice” Amy Coney Barrett’s house encountered opposition from far-right neighbors. The pro-Nazi and pro forced birth messages they chalked on the trail to Amy’s block were no surprise given racist and misogynistic statements made at prior protests by Karens and Kens who live on Amy Coney Barrett’s block.

On the 6th of October, a meeting of the Fairfax County school board at Luther Jackson Middle School included an agenda item of favorable concern to transgender students. A rally was held prior to the meeting in support of this agenda item and more generally to protect trans and gender expansive students from the current wave of hate and attacks. Only a half dozen presumed Christian Nationalists dared counterprotest.

Whoever commanded the Montgomery County police presence at last week’s Kavanaugh protest seems to have been replaced after all the videotaped harassment and threats. This time around, the Oct 5 Kavauagh and Roberts residential protests went smoothly, with no harassment or problems of any kind.

Both Kavanaugh and Roberts have whined publicly about activists at their homes and elsewhere calling out the current Supreme Court as illegitimate. With all the GOP cheating to steal a seat from Obama, then ram through three Trump nominees how can it be anything else?

On the 5th of October, so-called “Progressive Anti Abortion Uprisng” (PAAU) held a press conference at the Dept of Justice to decry the Federal prison time they may get for storming abortion clinics. Two pro-choice counterprotesters called out their hypocrisy, one responding to their whining about Jane’s Revenge with “Jane is watching!” The entire event was livestreamed so this is certainly true.

PAAU is infamous as the group that burglarized a DC area clinic and stole five fetuses, and whose operators may have stolen hundreds more to baptize and bury. Baptism does not sound like the sort of thing progressives would take personal risks to bring about. These are religious extremists like the rest of the anti-choice movement. The keynote speaker at their Oct 5 presser was the infamous Randall Terry, formerly of Operation Rescue and a notorious terrorist.

The reality of the situation is that cops are cops, and if they were able to find Jane’s Revenge’s operators they would likely face far more prison time than anyone ever would for clinic blockades or vandalism. Cops tend well to the right politically, and no doubt there are many cops and sheriff’s deputies just chomping at the bit to arrest women at highway checkpoints for going out of state to get abortions. These sort of cops and prosecutors will do as little to those who attack clinics as they can get away with.

PAAU screamed about being prosecuted while nobody has been caught and thus nobody prosecuted for Jane’s Revenge’s guerilla strikes. Janes Revenge however is an underground movement whose skilled operators have not given cops opportunities to catch them. The Department of “Justice” cannot prosecute people who cannot be identified or found, so PAAU’s whining about the lack of such prosecutions is meaningless. PAAU by comparison attacks clinics and harasses patients right out in the open, so naturally their identities are known. Doubtful they will face much prison time: there were a number of cases where far-right bombings of abortion clinics netted five year sentences. That is less than some in the SHAC 6 case got for running an anti-vivisection website targetting Huntingdon Life Sciences. PAAU had a lot of nerve comparing themselves to those who had to stand up to the FBI’s Green Scare.