Submedia.tv: Independent reporter Wes Osburn describes his arrest in Oakland, CA
Caution: strong language. I know Wes’ work from the 2008 RNC in St. Paul, MN and the 2009 G-20 in Pittsburgh, PA., where we both worked with Indymedia. I interviewed him after he was denied entry to Canada in early 2010 to cover the protests against the Olympics: nigelparry.com After the Oscar Grant verdict in Oakland, Wes was covering the protests when cops arrested him while filming and charged him with *arson*, giving him $125000 bail. You can see in the video he took during his arrest in Oakland that there wasn’t even a candle in sight. He was in jail for 5 days. The ridiculous arson charge was later dropped and replaced with the usual misdemeanors handed out to independent media reporters at such events—failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, etc. The point was clearly to get Wes off the streets. As the cops understand very well, there would have been no trial of the officer who killed Grant without the presence of multiple cameras on the BART platform. This interview was with Submedia.tv, found at submedia.tv and is used with permission. Read more about the persecution of independent reporters and bloggers at the website of the Committee to Protect Bloggers, at http – I am a member of the committee.
