Photo by Jefferson Siegel
Activist John Penley — who is a former news photographer — was recently in Tompkins Square Park, new digital camera in hand. He had come to the city a week earlier to organize a protest at the Mexican Consulate over recent attacks on a Zapatista school that left one dead, 15 injured and the school burned down. He also co-organized the “Money Out / Voters In” protest outside David Koch’s, of the Koch brothers, Upper East Side home. Penley planned to return soon to Asheville, N.C., to fight fracking, which he said the state legislature there had just legalized. “I’m going to Mexico in the fall to continue my support of the Zapatistas,” he said, “because I feel what happened was the opening shot in a campaign that involves government officers, narco-traffickers and police to get the Zapatistas off their land.”
