At around 1pm, dozens of colorful celebrators gathered at the Vance monument to enjoy their freedoms, express their dissent, have a waterball fight in the street, and parade around downtown for this year's international workers day.

Food Not Bombs provided food for the initial picnic while a marching band provided entertainment. Eventually people started shoving giant plastic barricades into the street, blocking all traffic in the intersection in front of the Vance Monument, so they could have a water balloon fight. Then there was a parade! Everyone marched around downtown, turning corners to avoid the police blockades. Right outside the Grove Arcade, one person got arrested and charged with inciting a riot, but he is now out of jail. His court date is scheduled for June 6. Everyone else marched back to Pack Place and continued the party for awhile. Over all, it was a wonderful May Day for Asheville.

Happy May Day!

See also: http://www.mountainx.com/news/2008/may_day_parade_attra...f_apd

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: A number of residential protests occurred outside the homes of Quintiles and GlaxoSmithKline Executives homes as well as a noisy protest outside of the Staples corporation. We demand they make statements publicly severing their ties with Huntingdon Life Sciences.

As part of World Week for Animals in Labs, local animal activists held a number of protests as part of the campaign to close Huntingdon Life Sciences, a notorious animal testing laboratory that has been caught in six undercover investigations abusing animals including shaking and punching five month-old beagle puppies in the face, cutting open a monkey while it was still alive as, falsifying scientific data, and breaking animal welfare laws hundreds of times. One worker was quoted as saying, "you could wipe your ass with this data." Another employee was documented cutting out a dead beagle's eyes and mailing it to his ex-girlfriend in the mail saying, "I only have eyes for you." These are the sick people who work at Huntingdon and this is the kind of shoddy, fraudulent research that is being contracted by pharmaceutical companies like Novartis, Glaxosmithkline, Syngenta and Quintiles. HLS has been almost financially ruined by activists around the world, but has been continually propped up by the UK and US governments. Organizers in the U.S. and Britain have been undergoing serious repression including government spying and the incarceration of activists at the behest of financial institutions and pharmaceutical companies. But the protests will not stop.

FROM THE NEWSWIRE:
You are invited to:

Mountain Justice Summer Camp
May 17 - 23
Harlan County, Kentucky

Our 2008 Mountain Justice Summer camp will be at the base of beautiful Pine Mountain, with an old-growth forest and incredible hiking just above the camp - plus live mountain music, great food, films, workshops on coal mining and Appalachian culture, skills training, and plenty of time for fun and relaxing.

Best of all, the camp is extremely low-cost, only $20 plus $10 per night. There are cabins with bunk beds, plus tent spaces, a beautiful lake, awesome mountain views, and some of the best people you will ever meet anywhere (sorry - no dogs this year).

Register now at http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org

Go to the website to see pictures of the camp and some photos of our camp last year in Tennessee. This is our 4th annual camp, and we think this is going to be the biggest and best camp we have ever had, with well-known speakers like Kentucky author Silas House, Kayford Mountain Keeper Larry Gibson, Teri Blanton of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Ed Wiley from Rock Creek, West Virginia, plus many local Harlan County residents and coal miners who are concerned about mountaintop removal mining.

Asheville Rising Tide is actively looking for donations. Anything helps!

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: At 6:30 this morning, North Carolina residents locked themselves to bulldozers to stop the construction of Duke Energy's massive Cliffside coal-fired power plant being built 50 miles west of Charlotte, NC. "In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our generation," said local farmer Matt Wallace, while locked to a bulldozer. The concerned citizens also roped off the construction site with "Global Warming Crime Scene" tape and held banners that read "Coal Fuels Climate Change" and "Social Change, not Climate Change."

Shortly after activists locked themselves to construction equipment, police arrived on the scene and used pain compliance holds and tazers to force them to unlock themselves.

The act of civil disobedience is one of over 100 protests taking place around the world on what climate activists are calling Fossil Fools Day, a confrontational day of protest targeting companies responsible for runaway carbon dioxide emissions. The day of action was organized by the international Rising Tide network and its allies to demand an end to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels and a just, rapid transition to sustainable ways of living. In Nottingham, UK, climate activists blockaded the offices of E-on, a company trying to build a new generation of coal-fired power stations, while another group in Wales halted work at one of the biggest opencast coal mines in Europe.

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: Over 60 students walked out of classes here at UNC-Asheville on Thursday, March 20th, to answer the national call to action from Students for a Democratic Society. They were joined by members of the community, as well as members of the WNC Peace Coalition, Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, No More Victims, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization for a march downtown and a rally at Pack Square. These organizations made up the Asheville March 20 Coalition, organized by UNCA SDS. Leaders from all of these organizations spoke at the rally downtown.

Angela Denio spoke to the rally on behalf of UNCA SDS. In her speech to the assembled crowd she noted, “Almost 4000 American soldiers have died in this war. 1.2 million Iraqi people have died. Beyond this there is mass displacement- 4 million refugees.”

Do you keep missing meetings? Forget your dad's birthday? Didn't realize that martial law was declared to put down a meat packers' strike in Nebraska City on January 27, 1922? You must not have a Slingshot Organizer!

Asheville Indymedia is now selling 2008 Slingshot Organizers at Rosetta's Kitchen at 111 Broadway St in downtown Asheville. We know it's a little late in the year, but Slinghots are cool, artsy, collectively-made daily planners chock-full of facts about people's history. They also include menstrual calandars, space for address & phone numbers, and loads of useful information on emotional well-being, consent, dealing with government repression, etc. as well as a list of radical contacts around the world. For more information, go to: http://slingshot.tao.ca/organizer.php

Small "classic" pocket Slingshots are $6. Large desk calendar versions are $12. All proceeds go to Asheville Indymedia. Supplies are very limited, so go pick up yours today.

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: Students for a Democratic Society call for any and all student and youth based organizations that are opposed to the war in Iraq to mobilize their memberships, their campus, their community and hit the streets for the week of March 17-21, with March 20, the fifth anniversary of the war, as the focal point.

NATIONAL DAYS OF STUDENT ACTION AGAINST THE IRAQ WAR
ALL OUT FOR MARCH 20, 2008

This March will mark a grim milestone - the fifth anniversary of the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. Despite the clear mandate from the American people to end the occupation, the U.S. government continues to wage war upon the Iraqi people. Bush’s mocking response to dwindling public support for the war has been the “troop surge,” or simply more of the same, while simultaneously threatening neighboring countries like Iran. For their part, the Democrats refuse to commit to a clear anti-war stance, even as they try to posture as the opposition party. Meanwhile, the threat of domestic recession looms, racist attacks increase, and millions lack decent housing, jobs, education, and health-care.

The war will drag on for many more years–draining billions of dollars and resulting in thousands of more causalities, both American and Iraqi, on top of the hundreds of thousands already killed, injured, and displaced–unless the people stand up and fight for change.

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: Fossil Fools Day, April 1st: International Day of Action Against the Fossil Fuel Empire

The International Rising Tide network and its allies are calling for a day of action against the fossil fuel industry on April 1st 2008…FOSSIL FOOLS DAY!

Confronted with melting ice caps, unprecedented species extinction, droughts, and extreme weather the fools at the head of the fossil fuel empire continue to plunder the earth, with the governments as willing court jesters at their side.

Been feeling like the level of climate activism in this country hasn’t matched the severity of the climate crisis? Well- so have we.

It’s time we ask ourselves, how serious are we about stopping climate change?

FROM THE NEWSWIRE: Canupa Gluha Mani, leader of Strong Heart Civil Rights Movement speaks in West Asheville on Lakota independence.

With the stiff cold winds blowing and the snowfall covering my garden, I'm thinking again of the brave Lakota, who have so long endured hardship and oppression, and have now so boldly again declared independence from the treaty-breaking U.S. government. These First Nation people of Turtle Island have had enough of subjugation. They have reclaimed their sovereignty, and have invited all freedom-loving people to join them in the resistance.

At the West Asheville library last week, well over 150 heard Canupa Gluha Mani (One who walks as he protects the fight), aka Duane Martin, Sr., a warrior leader with Cante Tenza, the Strong Heart Civil Rights Movement. He was just back from Washington, DC where with eight other delegates of various Lakota tribes, they delivered documents to the U. S. State Department advising of a unilateral withdrawal from the trail of broken treaties.
"I never ever seen a man's face stretched as long as a rubber band," he said of the State Department employee on whom the Lakota served notice of their independence.

Calling the colonial oppressors by Lakota words meaning, "the people who like to steal fat," and "guy that can only smile for greed," Canupa Gluha Mani detailed some of the dire circumstances endured by the Lakota, including an epidemic of alcoholism, the removal of thousands of Lakota children to foster homes off the reservation, and the diminished life expectancy of Lakota men, many of whom fought in U.S. wars. "To this Godforsaken day it is always people of color going off to kill poor people."