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This week on Uprising:

* Race, Police, Vigilantism, and Trayvon Martin’s Killing
* Occupy Wall Street Resumes Actions In Earnest Despite NYPD Brutality
* Israel Ramps Up War Rhetoric on Iran
* The Activist Beat on the Wave of Anti-Reproductive Health Rights Laws
* ‘Men’s Rights Movement’ Symbolizes Growing Nationwide Misogyny

* * *

Race, Police, Vigilantism, and Trayvon Martin’s Killing

The story of 17 year old Trayvon Martin’s murder at the hands of a man who remains free has continued to spark nationwide outrage. Moments before he was killed in Sanford, Florida, Trayvon’s 16-year-old friend, whose name is being withheld, said he told her on the phone that he was being followed by a man on the evening of February 26th as he returned to the home of his father’s fiance in a gated community. The man was 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a resident of the area who frequently called 9-11 to report strangers he labeled suspicious.

A community uproar over the shooting gained national attention after the Sanford police decided not to charge Zimmerman, finding that his actions were justified under Florida’s 2005 “Stand Your Ground” law. That law expanded a private citizen’s right to use deadly force whenever a person believes their life is in danger. The Martin case has brought international scrutiny to the law which has been adopted in similar forms in at least 16 other states.

The Florida State Attorney has decided that a grand jury would investigate the Sanford Police Department’s handling of the Martin case, as police chief Bill Lee Jr. announced he would temporarily step down. The case will also be reviewed by the FBI and the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. President Obama late in the week commended the investigations and even said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” A mass march in New York this week to protest the case was attended by Martin’s parents, and thousands of New Yorkers, including members of Occupy Wall Street.

GUEST: Mychal Denzel Smith, a freelance writer and social commentator. His work on race, politics, social justice, pop culture, hip hop, mental health, feminism and black male identity has appeared in various publications, including The Guardian, Ebony, theGrio, the Root, Huffington Post and GOOD.

Click here for Smith’s article, ‘Justice for Trayvon Martin’ in the Nation.

Occupy Wall Street Resumes Actions In Earnest Despite NYPD Brutality

A mass march of thousands in New York City this week expressed outrage at the killing of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin by a man who remains free. The “Million Hoodie March” was attended by thousands of people affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and came just days after a revival of street activities by the movement. Earlier in the month, on the six month anniversary of the start of the movement that has inspired a nation against corporate greed, activists retook the site of the original encampment – Zuccotti Park which was renamed Liberty Square. A new encampment has also begun at Union Square. At both locations, the New York Police Department have continued using heavy-handed tactics, forcibly and violently pushing out activists. During Tuesday’s “Million Hoodie March,” at which Trayvon Martin’s parents were present, police pressure forced the thousands of activists into several groups that converged at Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Liberty Square. Later, using metal barricades NYPD officers tried to push out hundreds of protesters from Union Square, a park that is generally accessible to the public 24 hours a day. Decrying police brutality against the Occupy movement, the New York City Council, opposing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s position, this week denounced police violence at the six-month reoccupation of Zuccotti.

Meanwhile, Oakland, California, is witnessing a similar resurgence with several dozen protesters occupying Mosswood Park near downtown Oakland on Wednesday. Occupy activists all over the nation are building up for a major May 1st General Strike.

GUEST: Karanja Gacuca, Occupy Wall Street organizer and former Wall Street Risk Analyst

Visit www.occupywallst.org and www.fthebanks.org for more information.

Israel Ramps Up War Rhetoric on Iran

A secret US war simulation conducted this week and leaked to the New York Times on an Israel-Iran war could lead to a wider regional war that could leave “hundreds of Americans dead.” The war game realized the worst fears of top White House and Pentagon officials who see US involvement as inevitable if Israel were to strike Iran. Meanwhile, tensions between Gaza and Israel are high after days of cross border attacks last week left an estimated 25 Palestinians dead and many wounded on both sides. The fighting began when Israel assassinated the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees group of Gaza on March 9th. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week escalated his rhetoric on Iran, blaming Tehran for supporting fighters in Gaza and making the provocative statement, “Gaza is Iran.” British Prime Minister David Cameron said last week he did not see justification for an Israeli strike on Iran and the US has not been publicly supportive. Netanyahu also said a lack of support would not deter his country from defending itself, and stated, “Israel has never left its fate to others, not even the best of its friends.”

GUEST: Jennifer Lowenstein, a political activist and a faculty associate in Middle East Studies through the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also assistant programming director at the A. E. Havens Center, a division of the Department of Sociology also at the UW-Madison, and she is the Secretary and Treasurer of The Chomsky Fund

The Activist Beat on the Wave of Anti-Reproductive Health Rights Laws

The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents.

March 8 marked International Women’s day. Rallies, protests, and events took place around the world, from Gaza to the Arctic.

I love looking at photos and reading articles about women working for a more sustainable and equitable society for all, but it was hard to focus on what’s happening overseas as we suffer so many setbacks here at home. It’s tough to keep up and make sense of what we’re currently facing.

Read the full commentary here.

‘Men’s Rights Movement’ Symbolizes Growing Nationwide Misogyny

Legislation restricting the rights of women to independently make healthcare choices continues to be introduced in state legislatures at a dizzying pace, accompanied by debates that reveal attitudes about women that harken to a much earlier era. This week, the Idaho state senate debated proposed legislation requiring any women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound first, even if the pregnancy was the result of a rape. The belief that women cannot be trusted to make their own decisions has support in the growing community of the so-called men’s and father’s rights movement.

An article in the current issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report exposes the “man-o-sphere” through which this backlash to feminism finds a voice, and the real-life acts of violence that appear to have links to the hate found online. Hundreds of websites, blogs and chatrooms are devoted to rants about feminism and rage filled tirades against domestic violence laws and the family court system. Women, specifically Western women, are blamed for oppressing men through false accusations of abuse and rape, through divorce, and for generally demanding equality in the social and legal realms. Author of the report Arthur Goldwag writes that virtual threats of violence against women online appear to have real world consequences. The case exemplifying the link between belief and action is that of Tom Ball, a leader of the Fatherhood Coalition, who hit his 4-year-old daughter in the mouth and found himself entangled in child custody and child support battles. Last year, he lit himself on fire outside of a New Hampshire courthouse. Ball left a suicide note calling for a male insurrection. He wrote, “[t]he federal government declared a war on men. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.”

GUEST: Mark Potok is one of the country’s leading experts on extremist movements and is the editor-in-chief of the SPLC’s award-winning, quarterly journal, the Intelligence Report, its Hatewatch blog, and its investigative reports

Read Arthur Goldwag’s article here.

Read Mark Potok’s article co-written with Evelyn Schlatter here.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“The extension of women’s rights is the basic principle of all social progress.” — Charles Fourier