Tasneem Raja

Interactive Editor

Tasneem Raja is MoJo's Interactive Editor. She specializes in web app production, interactive graphics, and user interface design. Before joining Mother Jones, she was an interactive producer at The Bay Citizen. Before crossing over to the dark side, she was a features reporter and copyeditor at The Chicago Reader.

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Tracking Journalists Arrested at Occupy Protests

—By Tasneem Raja

| Fri Nov. 18, 2011 3:30 AM PST

Josh Stearns of media-reform group Free Press has been tracking journalist arrests at Occupy protests since September (see his complete list below). He constantly scans Twitter for mentions of latest arrests, tries to verify by contacting publications affiliated with the journalists in question, and updates their status on the list he maintains at Storify, the social-media curation site.

Unlike the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, where riot police ripped press credentials off journalists' necks and tampered with recording equipment, Stearns doesn't believe there's an intentional effort by law enforcement officials to target journalists covering Occupy protests. "Journalists are just getting swept up as part of the general 'nuisance,'" he says, "and cops are finding it easier to sweep house and get the details later." And in the age of smartphone reporting, Twitter, and livestream video, it's hard to tell who's a credentialed journalist and who isn't—or what that means for journalism.

"These arrests are a symptom of a larger debate about how we understand the First Amendment in a digital age, as the institutions that traditionally embodied those freedoms shift and change," Stearns writes on his blog. "As more and more of our speech moves online and over mobile networks, and as our press is distributed across vast human and technological networks, we need to contend with new kinds of First Amendment issues."

Read more of his thoughts here, and send tips and tweets on journalist arrests to @jcstearns.

View the story "Tracking Journalist Arrests at Occupy Protests Around the Country" on Storify

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Video: Occupy Oakland in Spoken Word

—By Tasneem Raja

| Tue Nov. 15, 2011 5:24 PM PST

Here's a powerful look back at Occupy Oakland's general strike (feels like forever ago, doesn't it?) by spoken-word artist Drew Dellinger and filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. And if you want to relive that intensely crazy night, here's our liveblog from November 2nd.

Map: The Nuclear Bombs in Your Backyard

Look up where in the United States the Pentagon keeps its atomic weaponry.

—By Adam Weinstein and Tasneem Raja

| Wed Nov. 9, 2011 4:00 AM PST

The United States currently has 5,113 atomic warheads deployed in silos, bombers, and submarines, mostly in the continental US. That doesn't include thousands of "zombies" being kept in reserve and a backlog of more than 3,000 warheads awaiting dismantlement. Meanwhile, we're telling the world that we're on the path to disarmament, even as we're spending more on the nuclear weapons complex than we did during the Cold War.

Zoom in on the map below to find the warheads near you as well as the nuclear labs that maintain the stockpile and develop the next generation of atomic weaponry. (For reference, we've also included the locations of the nation's civilian nuclear power plants.*)

Note: This map was made with 100% unclassified, public information. Even the military doesn't hide where it keeps its missiles and bombers. See links to sourcing below.

View full screen map

View Mother Jones: America's Nuclear Facilities in a full screen map

Sources: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Federation of American Scientists (PDF), Office of the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, Nuclear Energy Institute, United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, United States Navy.

Correction: An earlier version of this map misplaced some nuclear power plants. We have updated the map.

What Does the Occupy Oakland Strike Have to do With 1946?

—By Tasneem Raja and Gavin Aronsen

| Tue Nov. 1, 2011 10:06 PM PDT

When the acrid fog of flash-bang grenades and tear gas cleared on last week's violent clash between protesters and police in Oakland, the city emerged as a new focal point of the worldwide Occupy movement. On Wednesday, thousands are expected to flood downtown and march on the Port of Oakland—the country's fifth-largest—in a massive daylong protest and general strike. It's an impressive escalation from a patchy idea first tossed out just days ago at a General Assembly meeting in Frank Ogawa Plaza, the scene of last week's showdown. This is collective action on speed, and while most (not all) Occupy protesters are calling for a peaceful protest, city officials are preparing for trouble, just in case.

So can you really organize a citywide general strike in one week? Local Occupiers like to point out that Oakland hosted a general strike in 1946, and are using the city's claim to history as a rallying cry. So what worked then, and what would it take to pull it off again?

Fred Glass, a professor of labor history at City College of San Francisco, recently went on local public radio show KQED to discuss optimal conditions for brewing up a general strike. His recipe calls for four conditions: widespread anger among the working class, a "spark" to kick things off, someone willing to stick their neck out and call for a general strike, and an organizing structure. In Oakland today, the first is largely a given and Occupy Oakland has provided the latter two. If school teachers and port workers don't show up for work en masse on Wednesday, the injury suffered by Iraq vet-turned-activist Scott Olsen last week could be credited as the spark that drew mainstream sympathy to the local Occupy movement.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Open Letter from Oakland Police Union: "We Are Confused"

—By Tasneem Raja

| Tue Nov. 1, 2011 3:46 PM PDT

On the eve of a planned general strike in Oakland, the city's 645-member police union is blasting Mayor Jean Quan for "mixed messages" about the #occupyoakland tent city and tomorrow's labor protest. The strike is expected to draw thousands to downtown Oakland and its industrial port, hot on the heels of last week's violent clash between protesters and police. Facing down furious accusations of police brutality and blame for an Iraq war veteran's serious injury, Oakland police say they're part of the 99%, too, and they just want the mayor to make up her mind. Full letter:

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF OAKLAND FROM THE OAKLAND POLICE OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION

1 November 2011 – Oakland, Ca.

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.

Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.

That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?

It is all very confusing to us.

Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.

The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.

All of these mixed messages are confusing.