UPDATE by Will Emmons:

Just got back from this event and it went insanely well. Providence SDS showed up with an anti-imperialist funk machine in the form of two speakers in a shopping cart jury-rigged to a car battery and connected to someone’s mp3 player.  The funk machine was decorated with mad anti-war signs and flags. The greatest moment of my life was watching a shopping cart bumping with Daft Punk leading a train of dozens of colorfully clad activists to take Kennedy Plaza. Many young people who were waiting for buses realized that the FUNK THE WAR dance party was way cooler than where ever they were planning to go and we ended up with a head count of over 50 folks dancing on and around the Civil War memorial which had been taken over with “Providence Students for a Democratic Society” and “Resist U.S. Empire” banners. During an intermission in the dancing, Brown student Sopheya Lambertson, ‘11, and RISD student Kat Poe, ‘09, explained that this dance party wasn’t just about protesting five years of war but also taking back public space for activities other than working and consuming.  Special kudos goes out to the high schooler with the koi tattoo who was break dancing and the folks who fronted the money for the car battery. My only complaint was that no M.I.A. was played.

Check back later for rockin’ pictures and be sure to check out the rest of Providence SDS’s 5th Anniversary of the War Week of Action, like tomorrow’s anti-war march with the RI Spring Mobilization Committee starting at 4:00 PM from Burnside Park (next to Kennedy Plaza) and marching to the headquarters of the war profiteer and cluster bomb manufacturer Textron and then to the State House.  You’ll remember that it was Providence SDS that started this recent round of Textron activism last March with a die-in where Dylan V. Cofer-Shabica was arrested for smearing the building with raspberry jam.  

Oh and to the police who videotaped us: put that shit on Youtube so I can show my mom.

Original Post after the jump: more »

On Tuesday we got hundreds of visits off of Politico, for the post on how Hillary and Textron both suck. And yesterday we got hundreds of visits off of Fleshbot, for the post on shouting Tony Danza’s name during sex.

Doing Provy proud!

Ian has this article, on concerns about Clinton’s donations from big arms manufacturers — and, in particular, the money she’ taken from Textron:

Last October, in an examination of campaign contributions in 2007 from employees of major defense industry contractors, Thomas B. Edsall wrote on the Huffington Post that “Senator Clinton took $52,600, more than half of the total going to all Democrats, and a figure equaling 60 percent of the sum going to the entire GOP field. Her closest competitor for defense industry money is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R), who raised $32,000.”

Critics have previously rapped Clinton for voting in 2006 against Senate Amendment 4882, which would have banned the sale of cluster munitions for use in heavily populated areas.

Acknowledging that $2000 in PAC money is a minor amount in the scheme of campaigns, Segal, in an interview, nonetheless says that he is an Obama supporter “substantially because of the difference in his and Clinton’s behavior relative to issues like this.”

The full press release is after the jump.

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Would be, say, to bribe Saddam Hussein.

I can be incredibly cynical about the political process, but even I naively thought that there’d be unanimity about the above. Apparently not, per some of the comments over at RIFuture.

So while members of the Assembly will introduce resolutions congratulating basketball teams and marching bands, or designating Del’s and/or coffee milk the official drink of the state, with nary a peep from the right wing, I’m catching a ton of crap for introducing a resolution admonishing Textron FOR BRIBING SADDAM HUSSEIN’S REGIME!!! Such are the politics of our time.

The resolution condemns Textron’s payment of $650k in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime from 2001-2003 under the United Nations Oil for Food Program. For their actions, Textron was fined $4.7 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2007. (Textron is headquartered in downtown Providence.)

It calls on Textron to issue a public apology to “the people of Rhode Island, the people of Iraq, and the people of the world for its payment of such kickbacks.” It’s co-sponsored by Republicans Victor Moffitt, Joe Amaral and Democrats Al Gemma and Anastasia Williams.