The Committee to Protect Bloggers has covered the trials and tribulations of John “Wes” Osburn before, when he was denied entry to Canada to cover protests outside the Olympics. In this interview with Submedia.tv, Wes talks about the circumstances of his arrest while filming protests after the Oscar Grant killing verdict, and his time in jail. 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.

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 $125,000 bail. You can see in the video he took during his arrest in Oakland that there wasn’t even a candle in sight.

Wes 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 above was excerpted from a broadcast of Submedia.tv, found at http://submedia.tv

Nigel Parry

Related Links
The 2010 Olympics and Repression of Independent Media (February 15th, 2010)

http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/2010/02/15/temp/

U.S. independent journalist refused entry to Canada; questioned by U.S. Homeland Security (February 11th, 2010)

http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/2010/02/11/u-s-independent/