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"If corporations are people, why can't we put them in jail?"
Drop All Charges on the 'Occupy Wall Street' Arrestees!
Stop Police Attacks & Arrests! Support 'Occupy Wall Street'!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!
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This drawing has come to symbolize the California prison hunger strike and the solidarity it has generated. It was contributed by Rashid Johnson, a prisoner in Red Onion Prison, Virginia.
California Prison Hunger Strike Resumes as Sides Dig In
"The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers. In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because 'their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat.' But Ms. Weills said other prisoners told her that those four did so because they could no longer endure conditions at the administrative housing unit where they had been moved. 'We're freezing,' Ronald Yandell, one of the strike leaders, said to Ms. Weills this week. 'The air-conditioner is blowing. It's like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It's torture. They're trying to break us.'"
By IAN LOVETT
October 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/hunger-strike-resumes-in-california-prisons.html?ref=us
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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OCTOBER 9TH, Sunday, 3:00-6:30pm, AFGHANISTAN PEACE DAY
37260 Fremont Blvd., Fremont. Join hands with the Afghanistan community
in Fremont. Together we have a stronger voice. Please wear SKY BLUE, the color chosen by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers inside Afghanistan.
www.AfghansForPeace.org
http://journeytosmile.wordpress.com/
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United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC) CALLS FOR ACTIONS IN OCTOBER
TO MARK 10 YEARS OF WAR ON AFGHANISTAN
On June 22, the White House defied the majority of Americans who want an end to the war in Afghanistan. Instead of announcing the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops, contractors, bases, and war dollars, Obama committed to removing only one twentieth of the US forces on the ground in Afghanistan over the next eight months. Another 23,000 will supposedly be withdrawn just in time to influence the 2012 elections. Even if the President follows thru on this plan, nearly 170,000 US soldiers and contractors will remain in Afghanistan. All veterans and soldiers will be raising the question, "Who will be the last U.S. combatant to die in Afghanistan?"
In truth, the President's plan is not a plan to end the war in Afghanistan. It was, instead, an announcement that the U.S. was changing strategy. As the New York Times reported, the US will be replacing the "counterinsurgency strategy" adopted 18 months ago with the kind of campaign of drone attacks, assassinations, and covert actions that the US has employed in Pakistan.
At a meeting of the United National Antiwar Committee's National Coordinating Committee, held in NYC on June 18, representatives of 47 groups voted to endorse the nonviolent civil resistance activities beginning on October 6 in Washington, D.C. and to call for nationally coordinated local actions on October 15 to protest the tenth anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan. UNAC urges activists in as many cities as possible to hold marches, picket lines, teach-ins, and other events to say:
· Withdraw ALL US/NATO Military Forces, Contractors, and Bases out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya NOW!
· End drone attacks on defenseless populations in Pakistan and Yemen!
· End US Aid to Israel! Hands Off Iran!
· Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! Money for Jobs and Education, Not for War and Incarceration!
In this message:
The Wall Street Occupation continues
October 15
NATO/G8 protests in Chicago
UNAC conference
The Wall Street Occupation continues.
The Wall Street occupation is continuing despite dozens of arrests on Friday. A number of UNAC supporters have joined the occupation. You can join the occupation virtually by joining the viewers of the livestream at: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution. Here is another video of the occupation from Stan Heller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rfuvDr2wJQ
October 15.
UNAC calls for protest in local areas on October 15 to protest the 10th anniversary of the war on Afghanistan. Click here for a partial list of action:
http://nepajac.org/oct15.htm
Click here to add you action to the national list:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12185630202
NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm
To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To have your organization endorse the NATO/G8 protest, please click here:
https://www.nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html
Click here to hear audio of the August 28 meeting:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/54145
Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1
Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI
UNAC Conference.
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference originally scheduled for November, 11-13, 2011, has been rescheduled for March 23-25, 2012, in order to tie in to organizing efforts for building massive protests at the NATO/G-8 Summits in Chicago, May 15-22, and to have sufficient time to generate an action program for the next stage of building a mass movement for social change.
Organizations are invited to endorse this conference by clicking here:
http://www.jotform.com/form/12685942513
Donations are needed for bringing international speakers and to subsidize attendance of students and low income participants. Contributions will be accepted at www.UNACpeace.org.
For the initial conference flyer, click here:
http://nepajac.org/conferenceflyer.pdf
Click here to donate to UNAC:
https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
Click here for the Facebook UNAC group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_157059221012587&ap=1
Oct. 15-22, 2011 antiwar week of solidarity and in defense of civil liberties...
Marking the 10th year of the U.S. war against the people of Afghanistan...
Bring the Troops Home Now! Civil Liberties for all!
Fightback Tour!
No to FBI Repression, Government Islamophobia and War
Civil Liberties for All!
Featuring:
Stephen Downs, Albany, NY civil liberties attorney; Legal Counsel, Project Salam (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims); Leading national spokesman against government-promoted Islamophobia and repression against the Islamic-American communities
Jess Sundin, Chicago Grand Jury subpoena victim and solidarity/antiwar activist facing, along with 23 others, felony charges of conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism. Twin Cities antiwar activist; Leader, Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Other tour speakers participating in some of the meetings listed below include:
• Zahra Billoo, Executive Director, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations)
• Hatem Bazian, Palestinian-American UC Berkeley Professor of Near Eastern Studies
• Carlos Villarreal, Exec. Dir., National Lawyers Guild
• Rep., United National Antiwar Coalition
• Michael Thurman, Bradley Manning Support Network
• Laura Herrera, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Jeff Mackler, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee and Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Rep., Immigrant rights community
October 15-22 Initial Tour Schedule
Sat., October 15, 2:30 - 4 PM, 1182 Market Street (near 8th Street) Suite 203, San Francisco, Sponsor: SF Gray Panthers, reception/meeting, donations accepted 415-552-8800, graypanthers-sf@sbcglobal.net
Sat., October 15, 7 PM, 518 Valencia St. (near 16th St.), San Francisco, Main sponsor: Northern California UNAC 510-268-9429. $10 sliding scale. No one turned away.
Sun., October 16, Oakland Reception/lunch/meeting at the home of Jeff Mackler... with KPFA friends, 1-4 PM, $20/no one turned away. RSVP: 510-268-9429
Monday, October 17, 7-9 PM, The Redwoods Auditorium, 40 Camino Alto, Mill Valley, CA, Sponsor, Mill Valley Seniors for Peace; Marin Peace and Justice Coalition warrenut@aol.com 415-389-9040 Free
Tuesday, Oct 18, 7pm, 909 12th St, Sacramento. Free/donation requested. Sponsors: Sacramento Valley Chapter, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, 916-369-5510 & Sacramento Area Peace Action,
Wednesday, October 19, Campus meeting to be announced.
Thursday, October 20, 7:30 PM Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar Street at Bonita, Berkeley, Free/donation requested.
Friday, October 21, 7:00 PM, Sonoma State University, Warren Auditorium (Tentative location) in Ives Hall (Directions to Warren Auditorium: At the Main Entrance to the University, turn left off of E. Cotati Avenue onto Sequoia Drive. Take the first right at the Information Booth onto Redwood Drive. Turn left into parking lot E. Ives Hall is the building on the North side of the parking lot.. Parking free after 5:00 pm), 707-874-2695 Sponsor: Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action and Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center
Saturday, October 22, 2- 4 PM, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, 48 S. Seventh Street (between San Fernando and Santa Clara Streets), San Jose, Sponsors: San Jose Peace and Justice Center and San Jose Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Donations accepted. 408-373-0817
Tour co-sponsors: United National Antiwar Coalition • National Lawyers Guild SF Bay Area Chapter Committee to Stop FBI Repression • Project Salam • San Jose Peace and Justice Center • Mill Valley Seniors for Peace • Marin Peace and Justice Center • South Bay Committee to Stop Political Repression • Green Party of Alameda County • Oakland Education Association Peace and Justice Caucus • Peninsula Peace and Justice Center • Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists • International Action Center • International Socialist Organization • BAYAN/USA • Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • Lynne Stewart Defense Committee • Code Pink San Francisco • Socialist Viewpoint • Solidarity • Sacramento Area Peace Action • Socialist Action • Project Censored: Media Democracy in Action • Santa Rosa Peace and Justice Center • Sacramento Valley Chapter Women's International League for Peace and Freedom • Veterans for Peace Chapter 162 East Bay • Afghans for Peace • California Peace and Freedom Party • Michel Shehadeh, Case of the Los Angeles 8 • Cindy Sheehan, Peace activist • Courage to Resist • Muslim Peace Coalition/USA • Samina Sundas, Founding Executive, American Muslim Voice • Bay Area Committee To Stop Political Repression
All meetings wheelchair accessible. All meetings co-sponsored by United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC), 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
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Please share this announcement widely
MoveOn.org East Bay Council, Alameda Labor Council, San Francisco Labor Council,
New Priorities Campaign, U.S. Labor Against the War and Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
1PM Rally at Laney College
2:30 PM March to Federal Building & Frank Ogawa Plaza
Urge you to Rally & March for:
Jobs not Cuts !!!
Education not Incarceration
Work not War
Clean Energy not Climate Change
Social Security not Bank Bailouts
Main St. not Wall St.
Prosperity not Austerity
Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
End the Wars! Invest in Our Communities!
BRING ALL THE TROOPS AND WAR DOLLARS HOME!
We want an economy that supports the rights of all people to jobs at decent pay in safe workplaces, affordable healthcare for all, decent affordable housing, quality education in modern schools, a secure retirement, and a clean sustainable environment. We oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs. The rich, corporations, Wall St. banks and financial speculators should pay to fix the crisis that their irresponsibility and greed created. We have made our sacrifices. Now they should make theirs.
Make your voices heard!
www.jobs-not-cuts.org
For more information and to register endorsements, write to:
MoveOnEastBay@gmail.com
NewPrioritiesCampaign@gmail.com
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The Call for the 16th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation
Saturday, October 22,2011
12:00 NOON
3rd Street and Palou
San Francisco
(Endorse this call, forward to others. Return endorsements to oct22bayarea@gmail.com or call 510 206-0742)
Across the U.S., Black, Latino, and poor neighborhoods are treated like occupied territory by increasingly militarized armies of law enforcement. People are criminalized and brutalized for their perceived status - socioeconomic, immigration, mental health, and/or racial, gender, or sexual identity. People living in our communities, especially youth, are routinely stopped, harassed, beaten, and even killed.
--In Chicago, the home of the first Black president, police have shot 44 people so far this year, mostly youth of color, including 13-year-old Jimmell Cannon, who was shot eight times.
--NYPD continues to stop hundreds of thousands of youth of color every year for the most minimal suspicion, fewer than 10 percent of which result in arrest, and far fewer in charges or conviction.
--Police nationwide continue to kill with very little consequence. Twelve Miami cops shot at 22-year-old Raymond Herisse 100 times, then threatened those who recorded the incident, destroying their cellphones. A Tucson SWAT team shot at 26-year-old Iraq War veteran Jose Guerena over 70 times, claiming that he fired at them and then leaving him to bleed to death in his home. Both their allegations of gunfire and drug-dealing were later revealed to be false. In New York and New Jersey, at least 27 people have been killed by police since October 22 of last year, while at least 35 people have been killed by law enforcement in Washington State in the last 12 months. The killing of 22-year old Oscar Grant in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009 resulted in a rare conviction for the officer who shot him; however, he was freed after mere months in prison, while people protesting the outrageous verdict were met with police violence and mass arrests. In the weeks following that cop's release, SF cops killed Charles Hill, a 45-year-old homeless man, on a subway platform and 19-year old Kenneth Harding after he supposedly failed to pay a $2 train fare, then left him dying on the pavement in front of dozens of outraged witnesses.
--Police routinely abuse the mentally ill and disabled. Fullerton, CA cops beat to death homeless and mentally ill 27-year-old Kelly Thomas, described by many in the community as "a gentle, childlike soul." In Fresno, CA, 28-year-old Raul Rosas, Jr. died after being tasered by police. His girlfriend said "I didn't call the Fresno County Sheriff to kill him. I called because he needed help with his mental illness." Raul went into cardiac arrest and was denied access to three medical ambulances that showed up to assist.
--Recently enacted anti-immigrant laws have given police in the states of Arizona, Georgia, and Alabama sweeping powers to stop people "suspected" of being undocumented on no other basis than appearance. The hostility and racism stoked by these policies have already culminated in violence, as seen in the killing of 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereka by a border patrol agent and the beating death of 42-year-old Anastasio Hernández Rojas at the hands of La Migra. More than one million have been deported under the Obama administration.
--Racially targeted mass incarceration exacerbates the criminalization and marginalization of Black people, playing the same role as the Jim Crow laws that sprang from the Virginia slave codes of 1705. In 1954, 90,000 Black people were incarcerated. Now, over 900,000 Black people are imprisoned, a tenfold increase, while the total U.S. Black population has merely doubled in the same period. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate worldwide, with 2.4 million people in prison.
--Law enforcement continues to harass and sexually assault people, most especially women and the transgendered. According to the website InjusticeEverywhere.com, sexual misconduct was the second most common complaint (following excessive force) against police in 2010, involving 618 cops.
--Young schoolchildren are increasingly labeled and treated as criminals by school security and local police. Eight-year-old Aidan Elliot was peppersprayed and handcuffed by Colorado police, and ten-year-old Sofia Bautista was removed from her elementary school, then taken to a NYPD precinct, handcuffed, and interrogated for hours, while police nationwide continue to use tasers on students as young as six.
Meanwhile, repression against those who take action against injustices continues to escalate. Over a dozen activists with Food Not Bombs have been arrested in Orlando for feeding the homeless in public parks. The killings of Oscar Grant, Kenneth Harding, Kelly Thomas, Raymond Herisse, and John T. Williams in Seattle were all caught on video. Now, as if in retaliation against the subsequent public outrage, police in cities and towns nationwide have attacked and arrested people merely for recording their activity, while in Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts, video-recording the police is now explicitly illegal. Cops haven't stopped killing and brutalizing people--they're just making it a crime to record them while they do. Repression against progressive and antiwar activism has intensified: simultaneous FBI raids on activists from numerous antiwar and international solidarity organizations in three U.S. cities took place on September 24, 2010. Twenty-three activists now face serious jail time for refusing to participate in the ensuing grand jury witch hunts that clearly intend to discourage and intimidate would-be dissenters.
These vicious attacks are not going down without opposition. Whether standing up to police violence when it happens, as we saw in the video of Kenneth Harding's shooting, or organizing inspiring prison strikes in Georgia and California, people are uniting to fight back. Determined outcry from people nationwide against the shooting of unarmed men crossing the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has finally brought convictions of the guilty cops and exposed the sort of extensive cover-ups that are routine with police shootings. More and more crimes against the people are being revealed, as we have seen with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' Operation Fast and Furious, which intentionally provided weapons to Mexican drug cartels, and the overturning of over 4,000 convictions of youth in Pennsylvania after it was found that juvenile judge Mark Ciavarella received kickbacks from private for-profit detention centers.
Once we have seen the man behind the curtain, how can we pretend he is not there? One thing we know from years of experience is that when this system has to answer to organized people, it can't easily get away with all the things it's used to doing. Resistance matters.
THE VIOLENCE OF THE COPS, THE COURTS, THE FBI, LA MIGRA, AND HOMELAND SECURITY IS INTENSIFYING. OUR RESISTANCE MUST INTENSIFY AS WELL! Every year, thousands of people nationwide express their outrage, creativity, and resistance in response to the crimes of this system. People speak out and perform, they march in the streets, and more. The October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation embraces and encourages any and all such expressions of people's righteous outrage.
As said by the mother of Gil Barber, gunned down by a deputy in High Point, NC in 2001, "October 22nd is our day." ORGANIZE against these injustices! BREAK DOWN the barriers between communities that these crimes seek to strengthen! MOBILIZE people of all communities in the most visible way...and on October 22, 2011, WEAR BLACK! FIGHT BACK!
JOIN US if there is already an October 22nd event in your area. CREATE one if you are in an area where there is currently no group organizing. For listings of activities in your area, check the websitewww.october22.org.
To start building for an event in your area, email info@october22.org
TO ENDORSE THIS CALL, SIGN BELOW AND MAIL TO: October 22, P.O. Box 2627, New York, NY 10009, along with your tax-deductible donation to the national organizing effort. Suggested donation $15.00 (paid to "IFCO/October 22")
Name: ___________________________________________
Email: ____________________________________________
Organization: __________________________________________________________* (note if for identification purposes only)
Signature: __________________________________________________________
You may also make this endorsement directly on the website www.october22.org
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MEDICARE IN THE CROSS-HAIRS
SOCIAL SECURITY NEXT?
SAN FRANCISCO LABOR COUNCIL TEACH-IN
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011, 7:30-9PM
Plumbers Union Hall, 1621 Market St., S.F.
(5 blocks from Civic Center BART station)
For more information call Carl, San Francisco Labor Council Education Project
415-829-3816
CUTTING MEDICARE-MEDICAID IS THE POLITICIANS CONSENSUS #1 BUDGET TARGET
• President Obama has just proposed a $248 billion cut in Medicare as a starter & another $72 billion in Medicaid cuts.
• Obama indicated September 19 he will support cutting more than $320 Billion if Republicans agree with him on taxes.
• Vice-President Joe Biden last June offered Republicans to cut $400-$500 billion in Medicare-Medicaid
• Republicans last April proposed to raise out-of-pocket costs for Medicare for seniors by $7,000 per year
• The 'Supercommittee' of 12 in Congress said last week they want to cut even more than Obama has proposed. They will report 'how much' more on November 19.
• Congress will vote on how much more in Medicare-Medicaid cuts before December 23.
How Much Will Your Medicare Be Cut?
How Much More Will You Have to Pay?
Come Hear the Facts
Open Discussion to Follow
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For Immediate Release
Howard Petrick's "Rambo" - anti-VietNam activist tells his story-Marsh Berkeleyu-Oct 20-Dec 10
The Little Guy Takes on the Pentagon in Howard Petrick's "Rambo: The Missing Years" at The Marsh-Berkeley, Oct 20-Dec 10
The Hilarious and True Story of the Private Who Protested the Viet Nam War - While Still in the Army!
"Howard's show is proof you can fight bureaucracy and win. How he does so is told with aplomb and a certain sense of mischievousness." - Vancouver Fringe
"The potency of the show...springs from Petrick's first-hand account of his anti-Vietnam activism from within the army...this comes with an intriguing authenticity."- Winnipeg Free Press
"Petrick delivers...For 60 minutes he has you laughing through the fear." - Winnipeg Uptown
San Francisco. September 26, 2011. The Vancouver Sun calls San Francisco's Howard Petrick, "a guy who really knows how to get up the nose of the war machine." Petrick's Rambo: The Missing Years is an hilarious - and true - account of the misadventures of a Vietnam-era draftee who frustrates the military brass by asserting his right to organize his fellow GIs against the war. Petrick's Rambo - not to be confused in the least with the Sylvester Stallone action figure - plays at The Marsh-Berkeley, 2120 Alston Way in Berkeley, October 20 through December 10.
The story begins as Petrick (aka 'Hanoi Howie") reports for the draft and refuses to fill out the forms, befuddling the military bureaucracy for the first of many times to come. Yet, during his time of service he maintains an unblemished military record, breaks no rules, and continues to carry out his military duties.
Directed by Mark Kenward and developed with David Ford, the show plays on Thursday and Friday at 7:00 pm and Saturday at 8:30 pm from October 20 to December 10, 2011 (press opening November 4, no performance on Thanksgiving Day) at The Cabaret at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way, near Shattuck. The public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055.
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
La Colmenita, the National Children's Theater of Cuba, US tour 2011
Whether you are 7 or 70, Abracadabra will move you...Come and enjoy!
ABRACADABRA is not a play. It is an act of Justice and Life, written mainly by children who share the dream of freedom. A teacher invites her students to walk the road to the essences, through five very true stories of heroism and virtue.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Wednesday October 26, 7pm
East Bay Center for the Performing Arts
339 11th Street, Richmond, CA 94801-3105
Suggested donation at the door $10, Children Free
http://eastbaycenter.org/Events/EventsbyDate/tabid/261/Default.aspx
Thursday October 27, 1pm
Esperanza Elementary School, Oakland
Private Presentation
Friday October 28, 7:30pm & Saturday October 29, 2pm
Fort Mason Center, Cowell Theater
Entrance at intersection of Marina Blvd. and Buchanan St., San Francisco, CA 94123
Tickets $20, Students & Seniors $15, Children Free
www.fortmason.org/events/events-details?id=2026
Tickets on line: http://lacolmenita.eventbrite.com
For more information about performances in your area, please visit:
www.lacolmenitacuba.com
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Here is the official statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression on the 1-year anniversary of the raids.
Build the Movement Against Political Repression
One year since the September 24 FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas
Statement of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, 9-22-2011
Please come to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression one-day Conference in Chicago on November 5, 2011.
http://www.stopfbi.net/national-conference-2011
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression (CSFR) is asking you to build the movement against political repression on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 24, 2010 FBI raids on anti-war and international solidarity activists. We need your continued solidarity as we build movements for peace, justice and equality.
The storm of political repression continues to expand and threaten. It is likely to intensify and churn into a destructive force with indictments, trials, and attempts to imprison anti-war activists. The last we knew, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was preparing multiple indictments as he and Attorney General Eric Holder attempt to criminalize the targeted activists and the movements to which we dedicate our lives.
It is one year since the FBI raided two homes in Chicago and five homes plus the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, eventually handing out 23 subpoenas. The anti-war activists' homes were turned upside down and notebooks, cell phones, artwork, computers, passports and personal belongings were all carted off by the FBI. Anyone who has ever been robbed knows the feelings - shock and anger.
The man responsible for this assault on activists and their families, on free speech and the right to organize, is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago. Fitzgerald has an ugly record of getting powerful Republicans like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove off the hook, while mercilessly pursuing an agenda to scare America into silence and submission with the phony 'war on terror.' Fitzgerald is attempting to criminalize anti-war activists with accusations of 'material support for terrorism,' involving groups in Palestine and Colombia.
First the U.S. government targeted Arabs and Muslims, violating their civil rights and liberties and spying on them. Then they came for the anti-war and international solidarity activists. We refuse to be criminalized. We continue to speak out and organize. We say, "Opposing U.S. war and occupation is not a crime!" We are currently building a united front with groups and movements to defeat Fitzgerald's reactionary, fear mongering assault on anti-war activism and to restore civil liberties taken away by the undemocratic USA PATRIOT Act.
Many people know the developments in the case, but for those who do not, we invite you to read a timeline at stopfbi.net. We think the repression centers on this: During the lead up to the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a federal law enforcement officer, using the phony name of "Karen Sullivan" got involved and joined the Anti-War Committee and Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minneapolis. She lied to everyone she met and helped the FBI to disrupt many activities in the anti-war, international solidarity and labor movements in Minnesota - and also other states and even over in Palestine. It is outrageous.
In fact, many of those being investigated travelled to Colombia or Palestine to learn firsthand about U.S. government funding for war and oppression. There was no money given to any groups that the U.S. government lists as terrorist organizations. However, we met people who are a lot like most Americans - students, community organizers, religious leaders, trade unionists, women's group leaders and activists much like ourselves. Many of the U.S. activists wrote about their trips, did educational events, or helped organized protests against U.S. militarism and war. In a increasingly repressive period, this is enough to make one a suspect in Fitzgerald's office.
This struggle is far from one-sided however. The response to the FBI raids and the pushback from the movement is tremendous. Minneapolis and Chicago immediately organized a number of press conferences and rallies with hundreds of people. Over the first two weeks after the raids, 60 cities protested outside FBI offices, from New York to Kalamazoo, from traveled to the Bay Area. The National Lawyers Guild convention was in New Orleans the day of the FBI raids and they immediately issued a solidarity statement and got to work on the case. Solidarity poured in from anti-war, civil rights, religious and faith groups, students and unions. Groups and committees began working to obtain letters of support from members of Congress. The solidarity was overwhelming. It was great!
It is possible that U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald thought he was picking on an isolated group of activists. Instead, those raided proved to have many friends and allies from decades of work for social justice and peace. Over the months, all the targeted activists refused to appear at the grand jury dates set by U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office. In November 2010, a large crew of us travelled to New York City to found the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, after the United National Antiwar Committee meeting.
In December 2010, U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office called in three of the Minnesota women and threatened them. We prepared a campaign in case they were jailed for refusing to speak. The FBI also delivered subpoenas to nine more Arab-American and Palestine solidarity activists in December. Their grand jury date was on Jan. 25, 2011, and we organized protests in over 70 American cities, plus a few overseas. The movement was building and expanding, so we organized conferences with over 800 participants in the Midwest, the South, and on the East and West Coasts. While we were organizing a pushback, the FBI was making new plans.
On May 17, 2011, at 5:00 a.m., the Los Angeles, California Sheriff, under the direction of the FBI, busted down the front door of Chicano leader Carlos Montes, storming in with automatic weapons drawn and shouting. The early morning raid was supposedly about weapons and permits, but they seized decades of notes and writings about the Chicano, immigrant rights, education rights and anti-war movements. The FBI attempted to question Carlos Montes while he was handcuffed and in the back of a L.A. sheriff squad car. Montes is going to another preliminary court date on Sept. 29, prepared to face six felony charges, carrying up to three years in prison for each, knowing he is extraordinarily targeted by the FBI. We will walk every step of the way with Carlos Montes, and more. Montes was with us at the Republican National Convention protests; his name was included on the search warrant for the Anti-War Committee office in Minneapolis, and the FBI attempted to question him about this case. We ask you to support Carlos Montes and to organize speaking events with him and local protests on his important court dates, Sept. 29 being the next one.
The same week the FBI raided Carlos Montes in May 2011, the CSFR came back with a big revelation - we released a set of documents, the FBI game plan, which the FBI mistakenly left behind in a file drawer at one of the homes. The FBI documents are on the CSFR website and are fascinating to read. Fitzgerald and company developed 102 questions that come right from a McCarthy witch-hunt trial of the 1950s. It is like turning back the clock five decades.
The whole intention of the raids is clear: They want to paint activists as 'terrorists' and shut down the organizing. They came at a time when the rich and powerful are frightened of not just the masses of people overseas, but of the people in their own country. With a failing U.S. war in Afghanistan, a U.S. occupation of Iraq predicted to last decades, a new war for oil and domination in Libya, a failing immigration policy that breaks up families and produces super-profits for big business, and now a long and deep economic crisis that is pushing large segments of working people into poverty, the highest levels of the U.S. government are turning to political repression.
The only hope for the future is in building stronger, consistent and determined movements. In a principled act of solidarity, the 23 subpoenaed activists refuse to testify before the grand jury. This sets an example for others.
In addition, the outpouring of support and mobilization into the streets from the anti-war, international solidarity, civil rights, labor and immigrant rights movements means that not one of the 24 has spent a single day in jail. That is a victory.
We ask you to stand with us, to stay vigilant and to hold steady as we proceed to organize against wars abroad and injustice at home and as we defend Carlos Montes from the FBI charade in Los Angeles.
Committee to Stop FBI Repression - www.stopfbi.net
follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Add us to your address book
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White House Petition for Leonard Peltier
http://tinyurl.com/3qq4muc
A petition in favor of granting clemency to Leonard Peltier is now on the We the People portion of the White House Web site. We have 30 days (until October 22) to get 5,000 signatures in order for our petition to be reviewed by the White House. This petition may only allow US signatories.
Sign the petition here:
http://tinyurl.com/3qq4muc
Due to heavy site traffic, you may have trouble accessing the petition. Keep trying until you succeed. Try during off-peak hours.
Email our petition to your friends, family and others who care about this issue.
Facebook: Post our petition to your Facebook wall to let folks know about it. Here's a sample message you can cut and paste into your Facebook status: Petition for Leonard Peltier on the White House site, We the People. Will you sign it?
Twitter: Tweet about your petition. Here's a sample tweet you can use: Leonard Peltier petition on the White House site, We the People. Will you sign it?
Let's do it!
Launched into cyberspace by the
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee
PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106
www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
The Petition:
we petition the obama administration to:
grant clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier without delay.
10th Circuit Court of Appeals: "...Much of the government's behavior... and its prosecution of Leonard Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed."
While others were acquitted on grounds of self defense, Peltier was convicted in connection with the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents. Evidence shows that prosecutors knowingly presented false statements to a Canadian court to extradite Peltier and manufactured the murder weapon (the gun and shell casings entered into evidence didn't match; this fact was hidden from the jury). The number of constitutional violations in this case is simply staggering.
It's time to right this wrong. Mr. President, you can and must free Leonard Peltier.
Created: Sep 22, 2011
Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Human Rights
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/grant-clemency-native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-without-delay/LLWBZq1S
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Great videos of #Occupy Wall Street from all over the place:
#Occupy St. Louis: Bank of America refuses to let customers close accounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KtI85Zc6Oik
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600+ Protesters March on Bank of America - #Occupy Austin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1JOJ3joOA&feature=player_embedded
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Scenes From #Occupy Las Vegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=olatH3pSvlk
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Could Occupy Wall Street be infiltrated by political groups?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D983q4xOnZg
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Make Revolution, Not Reform: A Warning to the 'Occupy' Movement
andrewgavinmarshall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oneVFYeMHjU#!
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#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded
[This truly is an amazing thing to see -- no microphones allowed by NYPD yet the crowd is completely engaged with the speakers. The speeches have to be short because the words are repeated and passed along to those furthest away since they can't hear them. Mohammed's speech is great and there's no doubt that the crowd thinks so, too...Bonnie Weinstein]
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#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street
By adele pham
http://vimeo.com/30146870
@OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street from adele pham on Vimeo.
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#Occupy Wall Street Protesters Marching
[Thousands of NYU Students march to OWS...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJpzx9IqU4
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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Supporting Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV79czwzoo&feature=player_embedded
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Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded
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#Occupy Wall Street Begins To Go National!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDnFbIwZUWQ
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AlphaDog Proto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbZrQp-HOk&feature=player_embedded
The AlphaDog Proto is a lab prototype for the Legged Squad Support System, a robot being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA and the US Marine Corps. When fully developed the system will carry 400 lbs of payload on 20-mile missions in rough terrain. The first version of the complete robot will be completed in 2012. This video shows early results from the control development process. In this video the robot is powered remotely. AlphaDog is designed to be over 10x quieter than BigDog. For more information visit us at www.BostonDynamics.com.
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Children's Art from Palestine--Censored!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8mHw2-aZQ&feature=youtu.be
You can see the whole exhibit in a new space located just around the corner from MOCHA (Museum of Children's Art) at 917 Washington Street. For more information please call Middle East Children's Alliance at (510) 548-0542 or email at meca@mecaforpeace.org.
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OCCUPY-WALL-STREET-PROTESTERS-ARRESTS( Sept 20, 2011) Spread This Video Please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyvbI6Eq-qA
PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
UNEDITED - COP KNEE ON THROAT 9/24/2011 #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rbXfelyIoM&NR=1
9/24/2011 COPS KETTLING AT UNION SQUARE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJaQvh80L-g&NR=1
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Judge Mathis Weighs in on the execution of Troy Davis
[And he does a great job and he has a huge audience. ...bw]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogBdP6INHlE
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Bill Maher, Michael Moore Defend Tony Bennett for Saying That U.S. Foreign Policy Helped Cause 9/11
By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at September 24, 2011, 7:44 am
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/670832/bill_maher%2C_michael_moore_defend_tony_bennett_for_saying_that_u.s._foreign_policy_helped_cause_9_11/#paragraph2
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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php
Free Them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded
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Troy Davis, Racism, The Death Penalty & Labor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEues_-KoZU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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Empire State Rebellion: An Idea Whose Time Has Come - OpESR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIlfV1pCZY&feature=player_embedded
Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to Digg Post to StumbleUpon
The video below is dedicated to all the people currently Occupying Wall Street.
See you there again on September 24th at noon, and the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that...
Video Transcript:
Mainstream media in the United States is the most efficient
weapon of mass oppression.
The propaganda system is so extensive.
People are very confused.
They don't really grasp what is happening.
On a very basic and profound level
they understand that global banks have robbed the country.
They get that, but there is so much divide and conquer rhetoric -
it goes from the mainstream media
and it filters all the way down
into independent media.
So it's a matter of finding that place
where you can overcome the divide and conquer propaganda.
And where we can find that place
is on Wall Street and breaking up the banks.
How would a million people clogging lower Manhattan's financial district
play out in the global media?
If we came down there and said:
"We're not leaving until we have commitments
to break up the banks
and end the campaign finance racket."
Let's just go over some statistics here:
· 59 Million people without health care
· 52 Million in poverty
· 44 Million on food stamps
· 30 Million in need of work
· 7 Million foreclosed on
· 5 Million homes over 60 days late on mortgage payments
· $1 Trillion in student debt
We have the highest, most severe inequality of wealth we have ever had,
unlimited campaign spending,
budget cuts for the poor,
tax breaks for the rich -
this is the ultimate recipe for revolution.
America has 239 million people living paycheck to paycheck right now.
Food prices are going up, oil is going up, everything is going up -
these people aren't going to be able to make ends meet.
It's the same everywhere, it's global policies,
whether its Ireland, United States, Egypt, Greece.
People are going to fight back because
the economic central planners have become so arrogant.
Economic central planners, who control the global economy
through the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve,
are committed to sentencing tens of millions of people
to a slow death through economic policy.
Obviously, those people, as time goes by,
they are going to fight back,
because they are fighting to survive.
This is a global rebellion.
People don't seem to get the fact that we live in a global economy
and there is a Neo-Liberal centrally planned aristocracy
which runs the global economy,
and we are in the midst of a
worldwide economic war right now.
It is a straight up economic war
with genocidal economic policies,
which of course are going to lead to mass rebellion.
Decentralized global rebellion.
Decentralized resistance.
Decentralized revolutionaries.
We had you on the show a few months ago,
and you called for a revolution.
The revolution is happening right now.
Tells us about A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion.
The revolution is happening right now.
#OccupyWallStreet
Editor's Note: This music video was created on March 16th by Anon and posted to our social network. It was also posted on Max Keiser's website. It features clips from a Max Keiser interview with David DeGraw.
DO SOMETHING: @OccupyWallStNYC | #OccupyWallStreet | #OpESR
Have Fun and Get Something Done on Wall Steet This Weekend (MAP)
YOUR STREET: @OccupyChicago | @OccupyCleveland | @OccupyDallas
@OccupyFDSF | @OccupySTL | @OccupyHouston | VIDEO: Livestream
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9/11: Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out
http://911blogger.com/news/2011-09-16/911-explosive-evidence-experts-speak-out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw-jzCfa4eQ
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9/11: A Conspiracy Theory
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
[click on above to view the video]
Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.
TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn't handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced "missing" from the Pentagon's coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI's lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.
The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney...well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn't bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of "little practical significance". Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims' family members' questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were "a failure of imagination" because "I don't think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings " except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that's OK because it probably wasn't important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that's OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7?s collapse, but that's OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would "jeopardize public safety".
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that's OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn't recorded on video, in which he didn't resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team's members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
If you have any questions about this story...you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.
(c) 2011 The Corbett Report. All rights reserved.
Hosting generously provided by: EuroVPS.com
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HUNDREDS OCCUPY WALL STREET (LIVE STREAM VIDEO)
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution/share?utm_source=lsplayer&utm_medium=ui-share&utm_campaign=globalrevolution&utm_content=globalrevolution
Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com
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What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war?
Narrated by Tony Benn. Music by Brian Eno
Mass Demonstration October 8, Noon, Trafalgar Square, London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Bkg8zgoYQ&feature=youtu.be
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LOWKEY OBAMA NATION (BANIDO DA TV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRFywomdJTM&feature=related
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Remember Building 7 on France 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOaJZr83RJg&feature=share
Sound Evidence for WTC 7 Explosions and NIST Cover Up
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/the-911-files/sound-evidence-for-wtc-7-explosions.html
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Architects & Engineers - Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 - AE911Truth.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw&feature=player_embedded
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Geneva Towers Controlled Demolition -- San Francisco, May 16, 1968
I lived in Geneva Towers in 1967 for about six months. I was married with a six-month-old son when we moved to the Towers. It reminded us of New York (we had just moved to San Francisco in August of 1966 so an apartment building was familiar to us.) But what a difference from New York. I didn't drive at the time and, with a baby, and elevators that often didn't work (we were on the 15th floor--I don't remember which building) I was basically trapped. Mass transit was slow and the distances were long to get downtown. The apartment had heating under the synthetic flooring tiles and the first time we turned it on, the tiles melted where the heating coils were. The electric oven caught fire the first time we used it; and the first time we took a shower the tiles started to pop off the walls. The kitchen cabinets were made of unpainted particle board. The sliding doors to the cabinets were less than a quarter-inch thick and cracked if you slid them too fast! What a pre-fab slum that was!
I was so glad to break the lease and move into the Castro--into a two bedroom, first-floor Victorian flat--in a warm and bustling community close to everything. And the rent was $125.00 a month!
I did make it a point to watch the demolition of the Towers on TV (it was broadcast live.) And I was so glad to see it go. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw the collapse of the World Trade Center. ...Bonnie Weinstein
Geneva Towers Implosion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XVQ1LE2es&feature=related
The implosion [controlled demolition] of the Geneva Towers near the Cow Palace in San Francisco, CA on May 16, 1998
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Benton Harbor REPEAL RECALL.wmv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLL-AxOnTk
A few facts from the video:
Whirlpool has been meddling in [Benton Harbor] city politics for 30 years. For every tax break and advantage it can get. As the neighborhoods crumble...
With global sales of $18 Billion Whirpool paid 0% in 2010 federal taxes.
It received a refund of $64 Million.
Whirlpool has received 500 Million in tax breaks just since 2005.
Millions more in the past 3 decades.
Whirlpool took 19 Billion in federal stimulus funds. Then closed plants in the US. Including the plant in BH.
Rep. Fred Upton receives substantial campaign contributions from Whirlpool. And the Koch brothers.
Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Emergency Manager Law. And a budget that taxes pensions and cuts education funding in Michigan.
Then gave corporations (like Whirlpool) a $1.8 Billion tax break."
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Labor Beat: THE PEOPLE'S PUTT PUTT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FkYBneJpds
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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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London Riots. (The BBC will never replay this. Send it out)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJgILxGK0o
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Protest which sparked Tottenham riot
Hours before the riot which swept the area demonstrators gather outside Tottenham Police Station in North London demanding "justice" for the killing of a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police.
By Alastair Good
August 7, 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8687058/Protest-which-sparked-Tottenham-riot.html
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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?
"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."
Digital Inspiration
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
How Much Is $1 Trillion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?
For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".
Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".
Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.
A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.
With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson
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Very reminiscent of Obama...bw
Pat Paulsen 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oiQhhdz8ys
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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)
Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded
The video above documents what I am told is a meeting between Fukushima residents and government officials from Tokyo, said to have taken place on 19 July 2011. The citizens are demanding their government evacuate people from a broader area around the Fukushima nuclear plant, because of ever-increasing fears about the still-spreading radiation. They are demanding that their government provide financial and logistical support to get out. In the video above, you can see that some participants actually brought samples of their children's urine to the meeting, and they demanded that the government test it for radioactivity.
When asked by one person at the meeting about citizens' right to live a healthy and radioactive-free life, Local Nuclear Emergency Response Team Director Akira Satoh replies "I don't know if they have that right."
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Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class [Full Film]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZS91cqpa8
Narrated by Ed Asner
Based on the book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows.
Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV's disturbing depictions of working class people as either clowns or social deviants -- stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy.
Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a more complex reading of television's often one-dimensional representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of working class people.
Featuring interviews with Stanley Aronowitz, (City University of New York); Nickel and Dimed author, Barbara Ehrenreich; Herman Gray (University of California-Santa Cruz); Robin Kelley (Columbia University); Pepi Leistyna (University of Massachusetts-Boston) and Michael Zweig (State University of New York-Stony Brook). Also with Arlene Davila, Susan Douglas, Bambi Haggins, Lisa Henderson, and Andrea Press.
Sections: Class Matters | The American Dream Machine | From the Margins to the Middle | Women Have Class | Class Clowns | No Class | Class Action
http://www.mediaed.org
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Let's torture the truth out of suicide bombers says new CIA chief Petraeus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sm02UbKNCKQ
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Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin on WikiLeaks Cables that Reveal "Secret History" of U.S. Bullying in Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL0Dk21dC-M
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Operation Empire State Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvBlQcaaaU&feature=player_embedded#at=10
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20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Click an image to learn more about a fact!
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/cgi-bin/facts.php
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Licensed to Kill Video
http://nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k.htm
Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
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Tier Systems Cripple Middle Class Dreams for Young Workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pQW6TW8m4&feature=youtu.be
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Union Town by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM&feature=player_embedded
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BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!
"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!
Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be
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Max Romeo - Socialism Is Love
http://youtu.be/eTvUs4rY4to
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Cuba: The Accidental Eden
http://video.pbs.org/video/1598230084/
[This is a stunningly beautiful portrait of the Cuban natural environment as it is today. ...bw]
Watch the full episode. See more Nature.
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The Kill Team
How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon
Rolling Stone
March 27, 3011
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
Afghans respond to "Kill Team"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3guxWIorhdA
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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It's time to tell the White House that "We the People" support PFC Bradley Manning's freedom and the UN's investigation into alleged torture in Quantico, VA
On September 22nd, the White House launched a new petition website called "We the People." According to the White House blog, if a petition reaches 5,000 signatures in 30 days, "it will be reviewed by policy experts and you'll receive an official response."
Act now! Sign our petition to the White House: LINK
This is our chance to make sure the people in power know that the public still care about the fate of PFC Bradley Manning, and that we won't let this issue go away until PFC Manning is recognized as the whistleblower he is. It is also an opportunity for us to educate fellow Americans who may not have heard of PFC Manning yet, by boosting our petition to the top of the WhiteHouse.gov site.
The same day the White House launched the petition website, it also unveiled an Open Government Action Plan calling to "Strengthen and Expand Whistleblower Protection for Government Personnel." We consider this ironic given the fact that in April of 2011 the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, was forced to issue a rare reprimand to the U.S. for repeatedly denying his request to meet with alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Manning in an official, unmonitored visit to investigation allegations of his torture in the military brig of Quantico, VA.
We submitted the petition to the "We the People" website earlier this week, and we have already gathered over 1,000 signatures. We are relying on your help so that we can reach the 5,000 mark, and then some.
Signing the petition requires a quick and simple registration process. (Should you encounter technical trouble, please check out the link at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Click here to sign the petition now!
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
We petition the obama administration to:
Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Using the information PFC Bradley Manning allegedly revealed, media outlets have published thousands of stories, detailing countless attempts by governments around the world -- including our own -- to illegally conceal evidence of human rights abuses.
According to the President, "employees with the courage to report wrongdoing are a government's best defense against waste, fraud and abuse."
It appears that PFC Manning acted on his conscience, at great personal risk, to answer the President's call.
However, he has been subjected to extreme confinement conditions that US legal scholars have said may amount to torture.
Therefore, we also ask the Obama administration to stop blocking the UN's chief torture investigator, Juan Mendez, from conducting an official visit with PFC Manning.
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Pelican Bay Hunger Strike Resumes
By Erin Sherbert
September 26 2011
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/09/pelican_bay_hunger_strike_resumes.php
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Cristian Fernandez is only 12 years old. And if Florida prosecutor Angela Corey has her way, he'll never leave jail again.
Cristian hasn't had an easy life. He's the same age now as his mother was when he was born. He's a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In 2010, Cristian watched his stepfather commit suicide to avoid being charged with abusing Cristian.
Last January, Cristian was wrestling with his 2-year-old brother, David, and accidentally broke David's leg. Despite this, their mother left Cristian with his brother again in March. While the two boys were alone, Cristian allegedly pushed his brother against a bookcase, and David sustained a head injury. After their mother returned home, she waited six hours before taking David to the hospital. David eventually died.
Now Cristian is being charged with first degree murder -- as an adult. He's the youngest person in the history of his Florida county to receive this charge, and his next hearing is scheduled for tomorrow.
Melissa Higgins works with kids who get caught up in the criminal justice system in her home state of New Hampshire. When she read about Cristian's case, she was appalled -- so she started a petition on Change.org asking Florida State's Attorney Angela Corey to try Cristian as a child. Please sign Melissa's petition immediately before Cristian's hearing tomorrow.
As part of his prosecution, Cristian has been examined by two different forensic psychiatrists -- each of whom concluded that he was "emotionally underdeveloped but essentially reformable despite a tough life."
Cristian has already been through more than most of us can imagine -- and now the rest of his life is in the hands of a Florida prosecutor who wants to make sure Cristian never leaves jail.
The purpose of the juvenile justice system is to reform kids who haven't gotten a fair shake. If Cristian is sent to adult prison, it will be more than a tragedy for him -- it will also be a signal to other prosecutors that kids' lives are acceptable collateral in the quest to be seen as "tough on crime."
Cristian's next hearing is in just 24 hours. State's Attorney Angela Corey needs to know that her actions are being watched -- please sign the petition asking her not to try Cristian as an adult:
http://www.change.org/petitions/reverse-decision-to-try-12-yo-cristian-fernandez-as-an-adult
Thanks for being a change-maker,
- Michael and the Change.org team
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Your help is needed to defend free speech rights
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
We are writing to urge you to send an email letter today that can make a big difference in the outcome of a free speech fight that is vital to all grassroots movements that support social justice and peace.
It will just take a moment of your time but it will make a big difference.
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=326
All across the country people and organizations engaged in producing and disseminating leaflets and posters - the classic method of grassroots outreach used by those without institutional power and corporate money - are being faced with bankrupting fines.
This has been happening with ferocity in the nation's capital ever since the ANSWER Coalition was fined over $50,000 in the span of a few weeks for posters advertising the Sept. 15, 2007, protest against the Iraq war.
Attorneys for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) filed a major lawsuit in August 2007 against the unconstitutional postering regulations in Washington, D.C.
"The District has employed an illegal system that creates a hierarchy of speech, favoring the speech of politicians and punishing grassroots outreach," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF, stated in explaining a basic tenet of the lawsuit. "It's time for that system to end, and it will."
The hard-fought four-year-long lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund against Washington, D.C.'s unconstitutional postering regulations has succeeded in achieving a number of important victories, including the issuance of new regulations after the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia warned just last month of an impending declaration of unconstitutionality against the District.
In July 2011 the federal District Court issued a preliminary opinion regarding one aspect of our lawsuit and suggested that the D.C. government "revise the regulations to include a single, across-the-board durational restriction that applies equally to all viewpoints and subject matters."
But this battle is not finished. The new regulations still contain dissent-crushing "strict liability" provisions (explained below) and remain unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous. Plus the District has never withdrawn the tens of thousands of dollars of fines against ANSWER.
The District of Columbia is required by law to open the new rules to public comment, which it has done with an extremely short comment period that is now open. We need people to send a comment today to the government of Washington, D.C. It just takes a minute using our online Submit a Comment tool, which will send your comment by email.
Send a letter today in support of the right to produce and disseminate leaflets and posters in Washington, D.C. We have included a sample comment but we encourage people to use or add your own language.
An Opportunity for You to Make a Difference
In response to our lawsuit, the District of Columbia has now issued "Emergency Regulations" replacing the current system which the city now admits are a "threat to the public welfare," after the court issued a preliminary opinion that agreed with a basic argument of the lawsuit.
This is an important moment and we need you and others who believe in Free Speech to weigh in during the short 15-day public comment period in response to the proposed Emergency Regulations for postering. Submit an online Comment now that makes one or more of three vital points:
Drop the $70,000 fines that have been applied to the ANSWER Coalition for anti-war posters during the past four years.
End "Strict Liability" fines and penalities. Strict Liability constitutes something of a death penalty for Free Speech activities such as producing leaflets and posters. It means that an organization referenced on posted signs can be held "strictly liable" for any materials alleged to be improperly posted, even if the group never even posted a single sign or poster. The D.C. government is even going further than that - it just levied fines against a disabled Vietnam veteran who didn't put up a single poster but was fined $450 because three posted signs were seen referencing a Veterans for Peace demonstration last December, and the District's enforcement agents researched that his name was on the permit application for the peace demonstration at the White House. Any group or person that leaves literature at a bookstore, or distributes literature, or posts .pdf fliers on the Internet, can be fined tens of thousands of dollars simply for having done nothing more than making political literature available.
Insist that any new regulations be clear, unambiguous and fair. The District's new "Emergency" Regulations are still inadequate because they are vague and ambiguous. Vaguely worded regulations in the hands of vindictive authority can and will be used to punish, penalize and fine grassroots organizations that seek to redress grievances while allowing the powerful and moneyed interests to do as they please. The District's postering regulations must be clear and unambiguous if they are to be fair, uniform and constitutional.
Take two minutes right now, click through to our online comment submission tool.
Thank you for your continued support. After you send your comment today to the District of Columbia please send this email to your friends and encourage them to take action as well. Click here to send your comment to the District.
Sincerely,
ANSWER Coalition
www.AnswerCoalition.org
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International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
TAKE ACTION: New Punishment Against Rene Gonzalez
On Oct 7, René González, one of the Cuban 5 Patriots will be released from the US prison in Marianna Florida after serving out his 15 year sentence. Rene's crime was defending the security of the Cuban people against terrorist attacks.
The US government is now trying to stop his immediate return to his homeland, and his family, after he serves out the last day of this unjust sentence. And now, in the most cynical and mean spirited fashion, the US court that sentenced him in 2001 is extending his punishment by making him remain in the United States.
Because Rene was born in the US he will now have to spend an additional 3 years of probation here. Seven months ago his lawyer presented a motion asking the court to modify the conditions of his probation so that after he finished his sentence he be allowed to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family for humanitarian reasons.
On March 25, the prosecutor Caroline Heck Miller asked the judge to deny the motion. On September 16 Judge Joan Lenard rejected the defense motion, alleging among other reasons, that the Court needs time to evaluate the behavior of the condemned person after he is freed to verify that he is not a danger to the United States.
We have to remember that this is the same prosecutor that rejected an attempt to try Posada Carriles as a criminal, and this is the same judge that included in the conditions of his release a special point that while Rene is under supervised release that," the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists are known to be or frequent"
By writing this Judge Lenard made the shameful recognition that terrorists groups do exist and enjoy impunity in Miami. Furthermore she is offering them protection from Rene from bothering or denouncing them upon his release.
It was not enough for the US government to make Rene fulfill the complete sentence to the last day; It was not enough to try and blackmail his family by telling them he would not go to trial if he collaborated against his 4 brothers; it was not enough to pressure Rene with what could happen to his family if he did not cooperate with the government, including the detention and deportation of his wife Olga Salanueva; and it was not enough to deny Olga visas to visit her husband repeatedly all these years.
Why does the US government want to continue punishing René and his family?
The prejudice of the Miami community against the Five was denounced by three judges of the Eleventh Circuit of the Atlanta Court of Appeals on August 27, 2005, where it was recognized who the terrorists were, what organizations they belonged to and where they reside. To mandate that Rene Gonzalez stay another 3 years of supervised "freedom" in Florida, where a nest of international terrorists reside and who publicly make their hatred of Cuba and the Cuban 5 known, is to put the life of Rene in serious risk.
Today we are making a call to friends from all over the world to denounce this new punishment and to demand the US government allow René Gonzalez to return to Cuba to reunite with his wife and his family as soon as he get out of prison.
Contact now President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the immediate return of René Gonzalez to his homeland and his family
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE WHITE HOUSE
Write a letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
EE.UU.
Make a phone call and leave a message for President Barack Obama: 202-456-1111
Send an e-mail message to President Barack Obama
HTTP://WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV/CONTACT
TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Write a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder
US Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Make a phone call and leave a message for US Attorney General Eric Holder: 202-514-2000
Or call the public commentary line: 202-353-1555
Send an e-mail message to US Attorney General Eric Holder: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
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Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protests
http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression
The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!
Office of the Mayor
City of Chicago
To: Mayor Rahm Emanuel
We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.
[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]
For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:
1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit
2. Guarantee our civil liberties
3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.
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Supporter of Leak Suspect Is Called Before Grand Jury
By SCOTT SHANE
June 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16brfs-Washington.html?ref=world
A supporter of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, was called before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, but he said he declined to answer any questions. The supporter, David M. House, a freelance computer scientist, said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, because he believes the Justice Department is "creating a climate of fear around WikiLeaks and the Bradley Manning support network." The grand jury inquiry is separate from the military prosecution of Private Manning and is believed to be exploring whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, or others in the group violated the law by acquiring and publishing military and State Department documents.
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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana state prisons must end
Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herman-wallace
For nearly four decades, 64-year-old Albert Woodfox and 69-year-old Herman Wallace have been held in solitary confinement, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison). Throughout their prolonged incarceration in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have endured very restrictive conditions including 23 hour cellular confinement. They have limited access to books, newspapers and TV and throughout the years of imprisonment they have been deprived of opportunities for mental stimulation and access to work and education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.
Louisiana prison authorities have over the course of 39 years failed to provide a meaningful review of the men's continued isolation as they continue to rubberstamp the original decision to confine the men in CCR. Decades of solitary confinement have had a clear psychological effect on the men. Lawyers report that they are both suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of close confinement.
After being held together in the same prison for nearly 40 years, the men are now held in seperate institutions where they continue to be subjected to conditions that can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.
Take action now to demand that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace be immediately removed from solitary confinement
Sign our petition which will be sent to the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, calling on him to:
* take immediate steps to remove Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace from close confinement
* ensure that their treatment complies with the USA's obligations under international standards and the US Constitution.
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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Stop Coal Companies From Erasing Labor Union History
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-coal-companies-from-erasing-labor-union-history
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One year after Bradley's detainment, we need your support more than ever.
Dear Friends,
One year ago, on May 26, 2010, the U.S. government quietly arrested a humble young American intelligence analyst in Iraq and imprisoned him in a military camp in Kuwait. Over the coming weeks, the facts of the arrest and charges against this shy soldier would come to light. And across the world, people like you and I would step forward to help defend him.
Bradley Manning, now 23 years old, has never been to court but has already served a year in prison- including 10 months in conditions of confinement that were clear violation of the international conventions against torture. Bradley has been informally charged with releasing to the world documents that have revealed corruption by world leaders, widespread civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces, the true face of Guantanamo, an unvarnished view of the U.S.'s imperialistic foreign negotiations, and the murder of two employees of Reuters News Agency by American soldiers. These documents released by WikiLeaks have spurred democratic revolutions across the Arab world and have changed the face of journalism forever.
For his act of courage, Bradley Manning now faces life in prison-or even death.
But you can help save him-and we've already seen our collective power. Working together with concerned citizens around the world, the Bradley Manning Support Network has helped raise worldwide awareness about Manning's torturous confinement conditions. Through the collective actions of well over a half million people and scores of organizations, we successfully pressured the U.S. government to end the tortuous conditions of pre-trial confinement that Bradley was subjected to at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Today, Bradley is being treated humanely at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. T hanks to your support, Bradley is given leeway to interact with other pre-trial prisoners, read books, write letters, and even has a window in his cell.
Of course we didn't mount this campaign to just improve Bradley's conditions in jail. Our goal is to ensure that he can receive a fair and open trial. Our goal is to win Bradley's freedom so that he can be reunited with his family and fulfill his dream of going to college. Today, to commemorate Bradley's one year anniversary in prison, will you join me in making a donation to help support Bradley's defense?
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
We'll be facing incredible challenges in the coming months, and your tax-deductible donation today will help pay for Bradley's civilian legal counsel and the growing international grassroots campaign on his behalf. The U.S. government has already spent a year building its case against Bradley, and is now calling its witnesses to Virginia to testify before a grand jury.
What happens to Bradley may ripple through history - he is already considered by many to be the single most important person of his generation. Please show your commitment to Bradley and your support for whistle-blowers and the truth by making a donation today.
With your help, I hope we will come to remember May 26th as a day to commemorate all those who risk their lives and freedom to promote informed democracy - and as the birth of a movement that successfully defended one courageous whistle-blower against the full fury of the U.S. government.
Donate now: bradleymanning.org/donate
In solidarity,
Jeff Paterson and Loraine Reitman,
On behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee
www.bradleymanning.org
P.S. After you have donated, please help us by forwarding this email to your closest friends. Ask them to stand with you to support Bradley Manning, and the rights of all whistleblowers.
View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:
I am Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027
The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811
This is also a Facebook event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=207100509321891
Courage to Resist needs your support
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!
Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!
Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!
STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!
Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com
http://iacenter.org/stopfbi/
Contact the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
at stopfbi.net
stopfbi@gmail.com
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY -- ANY DAY
to Fitzgerald, Holder and Obama
The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is still
harassing activists. This must stop.
Please make these calls:
1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0
(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.
2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555
3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111
FFI: Visit www.StopFBI.net or email info@StopFBI.net or call
612-379-3585 .
Copyright (c) 2011 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights
reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Mumia Wins Decision Against Re-Imposition Of Death Sentence, But...
The Battle Is Still On To
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610
www.laboractionmumia.org
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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DEFEND LYNNE STEWART!
http://lynnestewart.org/
Write to Lynne Stewart at:
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
Visiting Lynne:
Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
Commissary Money:
Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) 23 Arrested Wednesday in Wall St. Protest
By ANDY NEWMAN and COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 6, 2011, 10:22 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/23-arrested-wednesday-in-wall-st-protest/?ref=nyregion
2) Seeking Energy, Unions Join Protest Against Wall Street
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and CARA BUCKLEY
October 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/major-unions-join-occupy-wall-street-protest.html?ref=nyregion
3) Manhattan D.A. Is Asked to Seek to Undo 1999 Murder Conviction
By JOHN ELIGON
October 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/manhattan-da-is-asked-to-seek-to-undo-murder-conviction.html?ref=nyregion
4) 500 March in LA as Part of Wall Street Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/10/06/business/AP-US-Wall-Street-Protest-Los-Angeles.html?src=busln
5) Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Bradley Manning Now 500 Days in Confinement
Peace prize nominee Bradley Manning now 500 days in confinement
By the Bradley Manning Support Network.
October 7, 2011.
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/peace-prize-nominee-bradley-manning-now-500-days-in-confinement
6) International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
RENE GONZALEZ WILL ONLY BE FREE WHEN HE RETURNS TO CUBA
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
7) Happening Now: Occupy Atlanta Occupying Woodruff Park
By GLORIA TATUM
10-7-2011
http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/interspire/news/2011/10/07/happening-now-occupy-atlanta-occupying-woodruff-park.html
8) [NationalMassAction] Oct. 15 - a global day of action
October 15 is turning out to be a global day of action against the wars and economic crisis. We are not alone - let's link our struggles. From the Occupy London web page http://occupylondon.org.uk/
9) Return to Little Beirut
Occupy Portland is Born with Ten Thousand Strong
by SHAMUS COOKE
Counterpunch Weekend Edition October 7-9, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/07/occupy-portland-is-born-with-ten-thousand-strong/
10) Occupy New Orleans begins with mass protest
Members plan to stake out City Hall indefinitel
By Brian Sibille, Staff Writer
October 6, 2011 20:10
http://www.lsureveille.com/occupy-new-orleans-begins-with-mass-protest-1.2647966
11) More Bleak Job Numbers
New York Times Editorial
October 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/opinion/more-bleak-job-numbers.html?hp
12) Inmate's Release Brings Call for New Evidence Law
By BRANDI GRISSOM
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/inmates-release-brings-call-for-new-evidence-law.html?hp
13) California Prison Hunger Strike Resumes as Sides Dig In
"The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers. In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because 'their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat.' But Ms. Weills said other prisoners told her that those four did so because they could no longer endure conditions at the administrative housing unit where they had been moved. 'We're freezing,' Ronald Yandell, one of the strike leaders, said to Ms. Weills this week. 'The air-conditioner is blowing. It's like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It's torture. They're trying to break us.'"
By IAN LOVETT
October 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/hunger-strike-resumes-in-california-prisons.html?ref=us
14) The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good
"Almost 6.5 million people have been officially unemployed for at least six months, and another few million have dropped out of the labor force - that is, they are no longer looking for work - since 2008. These hard-core unemployed highlight the nexus between long-term and short-term economic problems. Most lost their jobs because of the recession. But many will remain without work long after the economy begins growing again."
By DAVID LEONHARDT, The New York Times Washington bureau chief.
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sunday-review/the-depression-if-only-things-were-that-good.html?ref=creditcrisis
15) Protest Spurs Online Dialogue on Inequity
"These Occupy pages around the country are being used not only to echo the issues being discussed in New York about jobs, corporate greed and budget cuts, but also to talk about other problems closer to home. In Tennessee, for example, there is an Occupy Tennessee Facebook page, as well as pages for Occupy Memphis, Occupy Knoxville, Occupy Clarksville, Occupy Chattanooga, Occupy Murfreesboro and Occupy Nashville, which helped get out the word about a lunchtime protest in Nashville's Legislative Plaza on Friday that drew several hundred protesters with some bearing signs with the movement's motto: 'We are the 99 percent.'"
By JENNIFER PRESTON
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/nyregion/wall-street-protest-spurs-online-conversation.html?scp=1&sq=Protest%20Spurs%20Online%20Dialogue%20on%20Inequity&st=cse
16) Protesters Against Wall Street
New York Times Editorial
"The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings - the very definition of downward mobility."
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/protesters-against-wall-street.html
17) Eleven Facts you Need to Know about the Nation's Biggest Banks
By Pat Garofalo, Think Progress
October 8, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/7787-11-facts-about-biggest-banks
18) Against the Institution: A Warning for 'Occupy Wall Street'
Posted by Andrew Gavin Marshall _
October 3, 2011
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2011/10/03/against-the-institution-a-warning-for-occupy-wall-street/
19) Local police forces are now little armies. Why?
By John Hanrahan
hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org
ASK THIS | October 06, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/64-64/7792-local-police-forces-are-now-little-armies-why
20) We, the 99 Percent, Demand the End of the Wars Now
Saturday 8 October 2011
by: Robert Naiman, Truthout | News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/we-99-percent-demand-end-wars-now/1318014376
21) Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?hp
22) Artists Occupy Wall Street for a 24-Hour Show
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 9, 2011, 11:33 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/artists-occupy-wall-street-for-a-24-hour-show/?hp
23) Daughter of 'Dirty War,' Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?ref=world
24) California Begins Moving Prison Inmates
By JENNIFER MEDINA
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/california-begins-moving-prisoners.html?ref=us
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1) 23 Arrested Wednesday in Wall St. Protest
By ANDY NEWMAN and COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 6, 2011, 10:22 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/23-arrested-wednesday-in-wall-st-protest/?ref=nyregion
Updated 1:59 p.m. | The total number of people arrested on Wednesday at the Occupy Wall Street protest was 23, the police said Thursday morning.
Most of those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct, said Paul J. Browne, the head police spokesman.
They included five people who rushed a police line at Broadway and Wall Street just before 8 p.m., Mr. Browne said.
One of the five was charged with riot.
Four others were arrested at State and Bridge Streets at 9:30 p.m., including one charged with assault after he knocked a police officer off his scooter, Mr. Browne said.
But some witnesses said they saw several police officers drive their scooters into the crowd in an apparent attempt to disperse those who had gathered.
Earlier in the day, the march from Foley Square to Zuccotti Park had been peaceful, with thousands of union members joining the Occupy Wall Street protesters. But as night fell, a smaller group began congregating at Broadway and Wall Street, where the police had placed barricades.
Just before 8 p.m., witnesses said, a group of people standing near the metal barricades loudly announced their intention to march along Wall Street. After what some witnesses described as a countdown, members of the group surged against the barricades, attempting to push past them.
Police officers on the other side of the barricades pushed back, witnesses said, and photographs from the scene showed an officer behind the barricade directing a stream of pepper spray at people trying to shove their way past.
At about the same time, some people gathered near the intersection stepped into Broadway and urged others to join them.
"Move into the street," a young man shouted as he stepped off the sidewalk on the east side of Broadway. A few dozen joined him, from both sides of Broadway, and briefly stopped the flow of traffic.
Soon, a wedge of police officers, many of them commanders, walked through that crowd shoving protesters back toward the sidewalks and appearing to grab and arrest a few of them.
Some in that group said that officers also used pepper spray. Sam Connet and Joe Demanuelle said that they had stepped into Broadway and had been among those milling in the street when officers strode through.
"They pepper sprayed first and then there was an officer swinging his baton," Mr. Demanuelle, 21, said.
"The spray was coming from different directions," Mr. Connet said, adding that he was knocked to the ground by a baton after streams of spray struck him.
A video posted to Youtube Wednesday night shows one officer saying to another, "My little nightstick's gonna get some - a workout tonight, hopefully."
When asked about the police's conduct on Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg allowed that he could not account for the actions of every single officer, but that by and large, the Police Department "conducted themselves the way they should."
"This is a city that values people's rights and gives them the ability to say what they want to say, I think, more so than any city I know of around the world," he said. "But you don't have a right to charge police officers like somebody did the other day."
The mayor also expressed skepticism that the city could resolve the protesters' issues, noting the group's lack of leadership. "They don't coalesce about one issue," Mr. Bloomberg said. "People in this country, but not just in this country, people in many parts of the world, certainly in Europe as well as here, are very frustrated."
"I mean," he added, "people are upset. They don't quite know where to go."
Kate Taylor and Al Baker contributed reporting.
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2) Seeking Energy, Unions Join Protest Against Wall Street
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and CARA BUCKLEY
October 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/major-unions-join-occupy-wall-street-protest.html?ref=nyregion
Stuart Appelbaum, an influential union leader in New York City, was in Tunisia last month, advising the fledgling labor movement there, when he received a flurry of phone calls and e-mails alerting him to the rumblings of something back home. Protesters united under a provocative name, Occupy Wall Street, were gathering in a Lower Manhattan park and raising issues long dear to organized labor.
And gaining attention for it.
Mr. Appelbaum recalled asking a colleague over the phone to find out who was behind Occupy Wall Street - a bunch of hippies or perhaps troublemakers? - and whether the movement might quickly fade.
So far, at least, it has not, and on Wednesday, several prominent unions, struggling to gain traction on their own, made their first effort to join forces with Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park.
"The labor movement needs to tap into the energy and learn from them," Mr. Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said. "They are reaching a lot of people and exciting a lot of people that the labor movement has been struggling to reach for years."
In fact, the unexpected success of Occupy Wall Street in leveling criticism of corporate America has stirred some soul-searching among labor leaders. They have noted with envy that the new movement has done a far better job, not only of capturing interest, but also of attracting young people. Protests have spread to dozens of cities, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Several union leaders complained that their own protests over the past two years had received little attention, though they had put far more people on the streets than Occupy Wall Street has. A labor rally in Washington last October drew more than 100,000 people, with little news media coverage.
Behind the scenes in recent days, union leaders have debated how to respond to Occupy Wall Street. In internal discussions, some voiced worries that if labor were perceived as trying to co-opt the movement, it might alienate the protesters and touch off a backlash.
Others said they were wary of being embarrassed by the far-left activists in the group who have repeatedly denounced the United States government.
Those concerns may be renewed after a disturbance about 8 p.m. Wednesday as the march was breaking up. The police said they arrested eight protesters around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, after people rushed barriers and began spilling into the street. While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said that one officer "possibly" used it. Several protesters were also arrested at State and Bridge Streets at 9:30 p.m.; the police said one protester was charged with assault after an officer was knocked off his scooter.
Despite questions about the protesters' hostility to the authorities, many union leaders have decided to embrace Occupy Wall Street. On Wednesday, for example, members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s executive council had a conference call in which they expressed unanimous support for the protest. One A.F.L.-C.I.O. official said leaders had heard from local union members wondering why organized labor was absent.
The two movements may be markedly different, but union leaders maintain that they can help each other - the weakened labor movement can tap into Occupy Wall Street's vitality, while the protesters can benefit from labor's money, its millions of members and its stature.
The labor leaders said they hoped Occupy Wall Street would serve as a counterweight to the Tea Party and help pressure President Obama and Congress to focus on job creation and other concerns important to unions.
"This is very much a crystallizing moment," said Denise Mitchell, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s communications director. "We have to look for sparks wherever they are. It could be an opportunity to talk about what's wrong with the system and how to make it better."
Still, it may not be easy for organized labor to mesh with this new movement. Labor unions generally represent older workers, while the Occupy Wall Street protesters are younger. Unions are hierarchical, while the Occupy Wall Street protesters are more loosely knit and like to see themselves as highly democratic.
Unions invariably have a long and specific list of demands, while Occupy Wall Street has not articulated formal ones. Union leaders often like the limelight, while Occupy Wall Street is largely leaderless.
"Labor's needed a way to excite younger people with their message," Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, said. "And to the extent that Occupy Wall Street's '99 percent versus 1 percent' theme goes along with what labor has been saying for a while, it's a natural fit."
"But obviously," said Professor Kazin, who has written several books on populist and progressive movements, "demographically, there may be some problems here. The protests haven't gotten much institutional presence, and if labor can help give them institutional presence, that can really help them."
Several major labor groups - including the Transport Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, the United Federation of Teachers and the United Auto Workers - took part in the march on Wednesday. Some more traditionally conservative ones, like those in the construction trades, stayed away.
George White, 60, a retired union member who lives in Marine Park, Brooklyn, said it was up to the young protesters to champion bread-and-butter issues in the future. "Unions are on the way out," he said. "These are the children of mothers and fathers who have worked hard all their lives and now can't put food on the tables. These are the children who can't pay off their loans, who have nowhere to go and no opportunities."
Julie Fry, 32, a lawyer who is a member of the union at the Legal Aid Society, said labor's backing of the protest was momentous, and born out of frustration.
"We're so fed up and getting nowhere through the old political structures that there needs to be old-fashioned rage in the streets," she said.
Before the march, protesters at the Occupy Wall Street encampment's welcome table said that while the unions were welcome, they would be only one more base of support.
"The idea that the unions will take over the crowd, that's not going to happen," said Jeff Smith, 41, a freelancer in advertising who has been on the welcome committee since the protests began. "We are not a group looking for a leader."
Others expressed frustration with the unions. Chris Cicala, 26, from Staten Island, said his father, a union painter, had been laid off, leaving his family without health insurance. "I don't get where the unions have been for the past 10 years," Mr. Cicala said.
Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, Joseph Goldstein, Rob Harris and Colin Moynihan.
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3) Manhattan D.A. Is Asked to Seek to Undo 1999 Murder Conviction
By JOHN ELIGON
October 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/nyregion/manhattan-da-is-asked-to-seek-to-undo-murder-conviction.html?ref=nyregion
When the police picked up Jon-Adrian Velazquez more than a dozen years ago in the killing of a retired police officer, three witnesses identified him from a lineup as the gunman.
No physical evidence linked him to the shooting of the officer, Albert Ward, but Mr. Velazquez was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 based primarily on the testimony of those three witnesses and others.
Now, however, two of those witnesses have recanted their identifications, and the third has expressed doubts about whether he picked the right man, lawyers for Mr. Velazquez say.
The lawyers, Robert C. Gottlieb and Celia A. Gordon, are employing a relatively uncommon approach in trying to get Mr. Velazquez's conviction overturned: They are filing a report directly with the Manhattan district attorney's office, rather than with a judge.
Mr. Gottlieb and Ms. Gordon are scheduled to meet on Thursday with members of the Conviction Integrity Unit, which Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney, established a year and a half ago, shortly after taking office.
With Mr. Velazquez's cause being promoted by David Lemus, who was wrongfully convicted in the Palladium nightclub killing, and Dan Slepian, an NBC News producer who lobbied for Mr. Lemus's exoneration, this case could represent the most widely publicized test so far of Mr. Vance's unit.
"This case is tailor-made for the Conviction Integrity Unit because there's no physical evidence, no DNA," said Mr. Gottlieb, who was a member of Mr. Vance's transition team when he won election in 2009. "It's all eyewitness evidence."
Mr. Vance said his prosecutors had yet to receive written information from the defense about the case but would review it once they did.
Since the unit was formed, it has reviewed more than 100 cases that were referred through channels other than the court, Mr. Vance said.
About a dozen of those referrals led to deeper reviews, some of which are still going on. In two cases, the office fought to uphold the convictions and won, Mr. Vance said. In another two, he said, his office had the charges dismissed before the defendants were convicted. And in one case, prosecutors moved to vacate a defendant's conviction but plan to retry the case.
"Can an office re-evaluate its own prior cases?" Mr. Vance said. "Yes, we can and we do. We take it very seriously. We try to approach it with fresh eyes, without prejudgment."
Barry C. Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project and an adviser to Mr. Vance's unit, said taking innocence claims directly to prosecutors "was a much better starting point than just going into court and filing a motion," because in judicial proceedings, "people develop tunnel vision and institutional bias on either side."
Mr. Gottlieb and Ms. Gordon began investigating Mr. Velazquez's case at the urging of Mr. Slepian, who began looking into Mr. Velazquez's claims in 2002 after a referral by Mr. Lemus. At the time, Mr. Velazquez, now 35, and Mr. Lemus were in the same prison, Green Haven Correctional Facility, and had become friends.
After Mr. Lemus's conviction in the 1990 shooting of a bouncer at the Palladium was overturned, he donated about $10,000 of his settlement with the state to pay for a private investigator for Mr. Velazquez.
"When I looked at him, I saw the same pain and sorrow that I saw when I looked in the mirror," Mr. Lemus said. "And then when we got into the details of his case, I started to believe more and more."
Mr. Ward was fatally shot on Jan. 27, 1998, after two men tried to rob a gambling parlor he ran in Harlem. Investigators turned their attention toward Mr. Velazquez after Augustus Brown, who was in the parlor during the shooting, picked his photo out of several hundred that the police showed him three days after the murder, the defense's report said.
Based on Mr. Brown's identification, the police placed Mr. Velazquez in a lineup, and he was identified by two other witnesses: the brothers Phillip Jones and Robert Jones. Another witness, Lorenzo Woodford, initially identified another man in the lineup but later said the gunman might have been Mr. Velazquez.
Another witness, Joe Scott, picked a different man from the lineup, and yet another, Dorothy Canady, said she did not recognize anyone, according to the report. At the trial, Ms. Canady, when asked to point to Mr. Velazquez in the courtroom, pointed to Juror No. 6.
But since Mr. Velazquez was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, Mr. Brown has recanted his identification in three separate interviews with lawyers and investigators. The report also said Mr. Brown told a private investigator last year that when the police had brought him in to look at photographs, they indicated that he could be implicated in the killing if he did not identify the gunman. Mr. Brown said he had picked Mr. Velazquez's photo just because he wanted to leave the precinct, according to the report.
Phillip Jones has said he did not believe that Mr. Velazquez was the gunman, the report said, and Robert Jones has said he is not sure that he picked the right man.
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4) 500 March in LA as Part of Wall Street Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/10/06/business/AP-US-Wall-Street-Protest-Los-Angeles.html?src=busln
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Several hundred people are staging a noisy protest against alleged corporate greed in the downtown Los Angeles financial district.
About 500 people from labor unions and activist and grassroots organizations are shouting and carrying signs Thursday outside a bank high-rise.
They're protesting in sympathy with Wall Street demonstrators in New York City who blame the poor economy on corporate greed.
Police Cmdr. Blake Chow says organizers worked with the police department to ensure the protest would be peaceful. No arrests have been made.
Demonstrators have been camping out at Los Angeles City Hall for the past week and say they may continue to do so through the winter.
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5) Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Bradley Manning Now 500 Days in Confinement
Peace prize nominee Bradley Manning now 500 days in confinement
By the Bradley Manning Support Network.
October 7, 2011.
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/peace-prize-nominee-bradley-manning-now-500-days-in-confinement
October 7, 2011 marks the 500th day in confinement for PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower. Along with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, PFC Manning is one of the nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The readership of the Guardian selected Bradley Manning as their top choice for the award:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/oct/06/bradley-manning-reader-poll-nobel-peace-prize
The Bradley Manning Support Network issued the following statement today:
"This year's nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize are bound together by a common drive to nonviolently reassert democracy in the face of authoritarian abuses of power.
Alongside those who have fought against the unjust accumulation of financial and political power, PFC Bradley Manning is alleged to be part of a movement to dislodge an informational blockade that enriches the interests of the few at the expense of our democracy.
Citizens cannot make truly informed decisions when the actions of government are routinely concealed from the public that they have sworn to serve. Government officials must be held accountable if they have withheld information from the public so as to hide evidence of wrongdoing.
Tonight, on the eve of PFC Manning's 500th day in pre-trial confinement, we do not forget that all people have a right to due process, free from cruel and unusual punishment. The Obama administration must stop obstructing the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, from conducting an un-monitored meeting with PFC Manning.
We expect any President to obey the constitutional freedoms that we all share. No one should be silenced for having the courage to speak or act against wrongdoing. The administration's message to us is clear: We are all Bradley Manning."
The Bradley Manning Support Network has recently launched a petition at WhiteHouse.gov to force the administration to respond to the United Nations and all those who demand freedom for Bradley Manning.
Click here to sign the petition now!
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/free-pfc-bradley-manning-accused-wikileaks-whistleblower/kX1GJKsD?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Already signed the petition? You can promote it to your friends on facebook and twitter! Copy and paste the following text: Tell the Obama Administration to let UN investigate torture of alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning! http://wh.gov/40y
The White House petition requires a brief registration process. As some people have been running into technical difficulties trying to sign the petition, we have put together a small list of frequently encountered issues: Click here for a few technical tips.
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/having-trouble-with-the-white-house-petition
Help us help Bradley. Donate to the Bradley Manning Support Network.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
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6) International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
RENE GONZALEZ WILL ONLY BE FREE WHEN HE RETURNS TO CUBA
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
To learn more about the Cuban 5 visit:
www.thecuban5.org
After 13 long years of injustice, Rene Gonzalez, one of the Five Cuban anti terrorist fighters, was released early this morning from the Marianna prison in Florida.
This is a step towards his freedom but he still is being denied the embrace of his wife Olga Salanueva.
And he will not be able to be received by the people of Cuba who love him and are demanding his immediate and complete freedom along with his four brothers.
As if 13 years was not enough, now the US government is heaping an additional punishment on Rene and his family by ordering him to serve 3 more years of supervised probation in the US. This is not only inhumane but puts Rene's life in serious danger.
The US government from now on will be responsible for anything that happens to Rene.
We have to ask Obama to identify and put a restrainer order on terrorist groups and individuals who operate freely in Miami so that they cannot come near Rene. After all part of Judge Lenard's conditions for his release was that Rene could not associate, or be in the vicinity of terrorists; the very people he was monitoring. During Rene's "supervised" probation the question has to be who will be supervising the terrorists?
One of the excuses being used to keep Rene Gonzalez in the US is that he could be a danger to the United States. They could remedy that easily by sending him home. This morning Olga summed up how ridiculous this argument is by saying. "If they say that he is a danger to that society what is the reason to keep him there?"
Now is the time to focus our efforts to move the sky and the earth to demand that Obama immediately release Rene Gonzalez to his family and his homeland.
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
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7) Happening Now: Occupy Atlanta Occupying Woodruff Park
By GLORIA TATUM
10-7-2011
http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/interspire/news/2011/10/07/happening-now-occupy-atlanta-occupying-woodruff-park.html
(APN) ATLANTA -- Occupy Atlanta, the Atlanta branch of the Occupy Together movement, has occupied Woodruff Park, following a General Assembly, which began earlier today at 6pm, Friday, October 07, 2011.
A group of 150 activists decided to stay in the park past the 11pm closing time and are still in the park as of the time of publication of this article, Tim Franzen, activist with the American Friends Service Committee, said, adding that Atlanta Police had begun to circle the park on motorcycles and with wrist ties. Franzen said some activists were prepared to link arms and get arrested tonight.
Activist Joe Beasley of African Ascension told Atlanta Progressive News that he did not think there would be arrests tonight because the park closed at 11pm and, in his experience, the police would have made the arrests then if they were going to.
The AFSC building on Walton Street has also been serving as a 24-hour organizing space for the movement.
Earlier today, Occupy Atlanta held a General Assembly at the park, and about seven hundred people attended.
Occupy Together is a new, young, and vital movement that is emerging in major US cities around the nation. They call themselves the ninety-nine percent that has been left behind and left out, while the one percent control vast amounts of wealth and took even more during the great transfer of wealth in 2008.
Prior to the current economic crisis, Wall Street ran amuck, without regulations, and the banks gambled away their resources in a frenzy of blind greed never before seen. Everyone lost except the CEO's and upper echelon of the corporate world.
Occupy Together is the beginning of a movement to hold Wall Street accountable for crashing our economy and throwing millions of families out of their homes. The ninety-nine percenters are aware that most of our elected representatives only represent the interest of the rich and powerful and not the people. The only thing that has "trickled down" has been unemployment, foreclosures, and homelessness.
During the General Assembly, a crowd of about seven hundred people encircled the facilitators. They announced: We are not Republicans, Democrats or any other party. We are the people and we have found our voice.
A sampling of the signs people carried read: "If we lose America then we have lost it to the Elite," "Corporations are not the People," "Bring the Jobs back - Made in USA," "No more $21 Million Bonus," "Corporate Greed is Destroying American," and "Money for Jobs not War."
State Senators Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta), and US Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) were spotted in the crowd.
US Rep. Lewis wanted to speak to the gathering but the leaders wanted consensus from the crowd to allow him to speak which was not reached.
The majority wanted to let Lewis speak at the beginning of the assembly but a minority wanted him to speak after the General Assembly finished reviewing their protocol with the crowd. Lewis had another appointment and could not stay until the end. The more mature and seasoned activists thought this was a missed opportunity to not allow Lewis to speak at the beginning.
Franzen told APN the decision to not allow Lewis to speak was motivated in part by the movement wanting to distance itself from the Democratic Party and the old leadership, to not be coopted like the Tea Party movement, and to reinforce the idea that everyone was equal. However, he noted that several Black activists who came to the General Assembly were upset.
APN observed some of the activists left frustrated at that point.
The General Assembly passed out their draft of demands and read their preamble: We hold this truth to be self-evident that the 99% deserve equal rights, equal protections, equal access and equal opportunity as the 1% who benefit disproportionately from the current system. We therefore freely assemble to assert our rights and demands:
1. We demand greater democratic control in all spheres of life, from the home to the government, from the economy to the workplace. It is a moral, logical and political imperative that people should be in control of their own lives to the greatest extent possible.
2. We deserve an economic system that meets human needs, reduces economic inequality, shrinks the income gap, and doesn't reward decisions that have a negative impact on society.
3. We recognize that the market will not regulate itself. What is good for profit is not always good for people or the environment.
4. We assert the right of every human being to adequate shelter, food, clothing, hygiene and other basic necessities.
5. We assert the right of every individual to adequate protection from the economic uncertainties of old age, accident, unemployment and other hardship.
6. We denounce all predatory lending and fraudulent banking practices and demand accountability.
7. We recognize that no society should allocate more resources to warfare than to the public good.
8. We demand a more democratic, publicly representative and accountable media.
9. We insist that the internet is a basic human right and as such should remain absolutely free and neutral.
10. We assert our right to public spaces and our right to freely inhabit them because they are essential to democracy and our right to assemble.
11. We denounce a criminal justice and for-profit prison system that relies on mass incarceration, especially when it reinforces the marginalization and disenfranchisement of people.
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8) [NationalMassAction] Oct. 15 - a global day of action
October 15 is turning out to be a global day of action against the wars and economic crisis. We are not alone - let's link our struggles. From the Occupy London web page http://occupylondon.org.uk/
On October 15th we will be Occupying the London Stock Exchange. At the same time thousands continue to occupy Wall Street and hundreds of cities from Paris and Madrid to Buenos Aires and Caracas are staging actions and occupations together for a global day of action.
By reclaiming space in the face of the economic systems that have caused terrible injustices across the world, we can open up and engage our communities into public discussions. These assemblies will allow people to voice their ideas for how we can work towards a better future and help us create concrete demands to be met. A future free from austerity within a context of growing inequality, unemployment, tax injustice and a political elite who ignores its citizens. So it's time for citizens to represent themselves. To work together to resist the government's plans and to do this in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of others around the world on the same day.
The problems we face in the UK echoes across the world. We are linked by the same root causes, so we cannot solve these problems in isolation. October 15th will be a global day of action calling for global change.
'O-15: Unite for Global Change' has been called by the 'indignants' movement in Spain, where thousands camped out in the squares for weeks, building massive popular pressure on the government. It inspired the current Wall Street occupation in New York, providing a space for the majority to resist the wishes of the greedy minority.
Join us at the London Stock Exchange to reclaim space and take part in workshops on topics ranging from Debt and The Spanish Indignants Movement to Fuel Poverty and Climate Justice. Contribute in the Open Assemblies and chant songs of solidarity with Samba bands. Exact times and locations to be announced soon.
Block the Bridge: General Assembly
Join us for a General Assembly to plan for Occupy LSX, on Sunday 9th Oct, 1pm, on Westminster Bridge as we 'Block the Bridge' with UK Uncut
http://ukuncut.org.uk/blog/block-the-bridge-block-the-bill
If you would like to run a workshop, or have any questions, please contact us at:
OccupyLSX@gmail.com
Lets make the UK part of an international movement!
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OCCUPATION START: Saturday, Oct 15th (Location to be confirmed)
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Sunday Oct 9th @Westminster Bridge at the 'Block the Bridge, Block the Bill' protest (please be there at 1pm and listen out for the annoucement / look out for our banner/poster. BTB event page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=277040145648345)
Banner making session: Saturday, October 8th, 12-5pm @Passing Clouds
(Event page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=297127830302586)
OccupyLSX Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/occupylondon
Twitter: @OccupyLSX (www.twitter.com/OccupyLSX)
hashtags #OccupyLSX #OccupyLondon
IRC Chat - http://chat.indymedia.org/?chans=occupyLSX
Email: OccupyLSX@gmail.com
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9) Return to Little Beirut
Occupy Portland is Born with Ten Thousand Strong
by SHAMUS COOKE
Counterpunch Weekend Edition October 7-9, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/07/occupy-portland-is-born-with-ten-thousand-strong/
It should be no surprise that a city dubbed "Little Beirut" by President Bush Senior - due to the large protests against him - began its "occupation" on a level on par with Wall Street.
On October 6, in Portland, Oregon, ten thousand people assembled at noon at Waterfront Park on a work day in anticipation of the non-permitted march, which would make a pit stop before ending at its official, secret "Occupation" spot.
The buzz for the event had permeated all sectors of Portland society. People who had never shown a political urge in their lives were suddenly convulsing. Hundreds of people started showing up at the organizing meetings, many of them younger people unknown by the "usual suspects" of Portland activism. A refreshing sign, since new blood is a key ingredient to all social movements.
Although people were warned of police violence during the non-permitted march, nothing came of it. This isn't surprising, given the close spotlight on Portland's police (the Justice Department is investigating them for police brutality and having heavy trigger fingers). Also, Portland's Mayor has a reputation for being Mr. Liberal, and cracking heads in broad daylight must not have sounded appealing to him. Most importantly, the march was large enough to defend itself, permits or not.
The atmosphere at Occupy Portland is one that forms the nucleus of any successful social movement: solidarity. Young and old from all backgrounds holding signs, chanting, and forming bonds with complete strangers over the issues that naturally bind all working people together: jobs, inequality, anti-war, student loan forgiveness, defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (the social safety net), etc.
These are the demands of the movement, whether or not they are officially recognized. They are the organic demands that arise from the experience of working people, as showcased by the countless signs in Portland's protest.
There were many "anti-system" signs as well; Portland has a healthy number of anarchists, socialists, etc. But many of these more-radical signs were held by working or unemployed families; some of the banners were vague or instinctive, while others were specifically anti-capitalist. The majority of signs were of immediate demands (tax the rich, etc.), but many were "system-based." This is the dual nature of the protests, something that will be eventually reconciled during the life of the movement. One demand needn't be sacrificed for another, but focusing on certain demands at critical times will be crucial to give the movement momentum after the initial of burst of energy has subsided.
For example, the majority of working people can instantly unite and be moved to action with a demand similar to "tax the rich to create jobs and save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," while only a minority of working people will unite indefinitely around the banner: "End Inequality" or "end capitalism." This is the main reason why specific demands must eventually be put forth; working people are only powerful against their corporate competition when they are united. Indeed this is the very basis for the plight of working people today - we are ruled because 99 per cent are divided against the 1 per cent.
Linked with unity is organization. The Occupy movement has shown an expert use of organizational tools such as social media. The day that Occupy Portland began, one could watch the protest live at www.occupyportland.org. Linked with organization is leadership, and although the Occupy movement rejects the word, there are already obvious leaders emerging.
For example, the organizers who knew the end location of the march are leaders, as are the organizers who committed to doing the most legwork towards outreach and communication. The leaders also decided that this march was to be non-violent, which angered a minority of protesters in Portland. Leaders also control the use of the web page. Democracy is crucially important, the majority must make the decisions for the movement. But leaders emerge with any organizational effort. They are the people who contribute most and create the space for others to occupy.
After the non-permitted march, protesters gathered in "Portland's Living Room," Pioneer Square, where the festivities continued. Later, the march continued to its overnight venue, a public park across from the county courthouse. As of this writing the Mayor had officially approved the occupation space until 9am the following morning, when the police would evict the occupants in favor of the Portland Marathon run, who had the park reserved. The occupiers hadn't yet decided whether to pack up and move elsewhere or test the power of the police. The optimism and numbers of protesters made the crowd courageous, but the 10,000 high mark had dwindled over the course of the night to a couple of thousand, especially after the drizzle began.
If Portland is any indication, there is plenty of energy ready to be funneled into victories for working people. It is up to the Occupy movement to find ways to best funnel this energy, since people will not indefinitely occupy something without a clear goal in mind, or without a barometer to measure their success. In Egypt, protesters proudly declared "I will occupy Tahrir Square until the dictator has fallen." As it stands now, nobody in Portland can make a similar statement. Demands and goals do matter; wanting general change is not enough, as the Obama campaign clearly proved: vagueness invites political opportunists and their offspring, which ends in disappointment.
But for now occupying is enough. We are entering the infant stage of a new social movement, and once the newborn's excitement of being alive passes away, real life must be dealt with: the infant must learn to walk; must learn what to value and how to achieve its goals while clearing obstacles out of its path. Although there is no telling how this baby will mature, we can only hope that adulthood will be successful.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)
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10) Occupy New Orleans begins with mass protest
Members plan to stake out City Hall indefinitel
By Brian Sibille, Staff Writer
October 6, 2011 20:10
http://www.lsureveille.com/occupy-new-orleans-begins-with-mass-protest-1.2647966
Grasping tightly onto signs in their hands, sweat soaking their brows and backs, a group of protestors marched through the heart of New Orleans on Thursday shouting, "Whose street? Our street!"
Nearly a thousand members of the Occupy New Orleans movement walked through Business District streets as police blocked cars from passing through.
But New Orleans protestors were only a small percentage of a movement that has seen thousand of arrests in cities across the United States.
Occupy Wall Street, held in the streets of New York City, began Sept. 17 and has continued to gain support despite alleged police brutality and mass arrests.
The heart of the movement is the current economic state of the U.S., with its targets including large corporations, wealthier Americans and politicians.
Protests similar to those in New York and New Orleans have appeared across the country in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta and even Lake Charles.
Members of the movement often identify themselves as the "99 percent" of Americans who are not overtly wealthy. Many of the "99 percent" have taken their cause to the Internet, posting pictures and stories detailing unemployment and difficulty supporting families.
Members of the New Orleans protest crowd ranged from college students and young professionals to children and the elderly.
Many could be heard chanting "this is what democracy looks like" and denying political affiliation, claiming the movement "is just people coming together."
The "99 percent" in New Orleans expressed the same outrage as fellow occupiers in New York City, but many localized their grievances to Louisiana. Much of their dissatisfaction was aimed at local politicians like New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
LSU acounting freshman Robin Williams carried a sign accusing the energy company Entergy Louisiana, LLC, of unfairly taxing those affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Williams said he learned of the movement online and joined because he agreed with beliefs other members had expressed.
One of Williams' grievances about the current state of the economy is that minimum wage is not sufficient for the youth.
"It's too low," he said. "There's no way someone can survive on it."
Williams was joined by a large number of college-aged protestors, including Nathan Anderson, LSU political science sophomore.
Anderson said he became involved in the "vague but fluid awakening" because he believes Americans are being robbed of their rights.
"Everyone has a right to an education and a home," Anderson said, naming student and housing debt as infringements on those rights.
Anderson said he didn't know what to expect out of the protests in New Orleans, but he said it was a "good first step."
Jillian Chrisman and Sara Mulholland, both seeking master's degrees in education at the University of New Orleans, said they fear the combination of high student debt and low income for teachers will trouble them later in life.
"I'll have student debt until I'm 50," Mulholland said.
The youth have played a large part in the national movement, not only as students but as a generation that will have to deal with a national debt and elders without Social Security, Chrisman said.
"It's our future we're defending," said Genevieve Vegetable, Tulane University public health graduate student. "There's an enormous burden on our generation."
Vegetable said New Orleans has felt the "brunt of corporations" in a country where "Medicare is a fantasy."
Protestors walked to Lafayette Square to protest the Federal Reserve Building nearby. The members took turns speaking to the crowd, including a woman who performed poetry and a college student calling fellow youth into action.
A man with a megaphone began chanting, "Wall Street says cut back. We say fight back." A trio with a drum, trumpet and saxophone crafted a melody, leading protestors in loud song as workers emerged from downtown buildings to observe the crowded streets.
"We don't work for the government," one woman told the crowd. "They are here to work for us."
The group eventually moved to Duncan Plaza in front of New Orleans City Hall, where they intend to occupy indefinitely.
Contact Brian Sibille at bsibille@lsureveille.com
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11) More Bleak Job Numbers
New York Times Editorial
October 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/opinion/more-bleak-job-numbers.html?hp
It would take a lot of optimism to put a positive spin on the jobs report for September, released on Friday by the Labor Department.
Employers added 103,000 jobs last month, allaying fears, for now, of a double-dip recession. But even if the economy avoids another contraction, the numbers confirm that the job market is in a deep rut that is, for all purposes, indistinguishable from recession. There are still 14 million people officially unemployed, and nearly 12 million more who have given up actively looking for work or who are working part time but need full-time jobs.
Earlier this week, President Obama and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, delivered bleak economic assessments, which demand a government response. The economy, already at a crawl, could well slow down further in response to economic setbacks in Europe and China or to homegrown problems like political gridlock that delay spending on job-creation efforts.
The economy is not producing enough jobs, and many of the ones created are lousy. Much of last month's job growth came as 45,000 striking Verizon employees returned to work. Without that one-time boost, the economy added only 58,000 new positions in September, roughly in line with the slow pace of job creation over the past several months.
That is not nearly enough to lower the unemployment rate, which is at 9.1 percent and is almost certain to rise in the months ahead, barring an unexpected upsurge in economic activity.
The new jobs are generally in lower-paying fields, like home health care, and in part-time and temporary employment. These kinds of employment may be better than no work, but they are generally not the types of jobs that allow workers to get ahead.
The September report also shows the permanent scars caused by persistent joblessness. The share of workers who have been unemployed for more than six months increased from 42.9 percent to 44.6 percent, near its record high from early last year. That is likely to translate into irreversible reductions in the standard of living for millions of Americans because the longer one is unemployed, the harder it becomes to find new work, especially at previous pay levels.
Children will be among those most harmed by the jobs crisis. The Economic Policy Institute, using data from the September report, has calculated that 278,000 teachers and other public school employees have lost their jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Over the same period, 48,000 new teaching jobs were needed to keep up with the increased enrollments but were never created. In all, public schools are now short 326,000 jobs.
At a time when more and better education is seen as crucial to economic dynamism and competitiveness, larger class sizes and fewer teachers are the last thing the nation needs. Staffing reductions also mean that schools are less able to respond to the needs of poor children, whose ranks have increased by 2.3 million from 2008 to 2010.
The situation calls out for swift passage of Mr. Obama's jobs bill and even more far-reaching efforts to revive growth and employment. The alternative is lasting damage from a jobs crisis that has already done enormous harm to families and communities.
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12) Inmate's Release Brings Call for New Evidence Law
By BRANDI GRISSOM
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/inmates-release-brings-call-for-new-evidence-law.html?hp
Not long after his mother was murdered, 3 1/2-year-old Eric Morton began to tell his grandmother what he had seen that terrible day.
"Mommy's crying. She's - Stop it. Go away," his grandmother said he told her. She asked why his mother was crying.
" 'Cause the monster's there," he said.
Gingerly, she pressed for more details.
"He hit Mommy. He broke the bed," her grandson said.
"Is Mommy still crying?"
"No, Mommy stopped."
Finally, his grandmother asked the question she was most dreading: "Was Daddy there?"
"No," he said. "Mommy and Eric was there."
The next day, she called the lead sheriff's investigator to tell him what the boy had said and that she no longer suspected that her son-in-law, Michael Morton, had killed her daughter, Christine. She urged the investigator to abandon the "domestic thing now and look for the monster."
Days after Mrs. Morton's badly beaten body was found in her bed in August 1986, someone used her credit card in another city. And a check was cashed with her forged signature.
The sheriff's investigators who saw Mr. Morton as the prime suspect had that information and a transcript of the grandmother's call. But when he was on trial facing a life sentence for murder, his defense lawyers knew none of it.
A quarter-century later, after six years of fighting for DNA tests that now almost certainly will result in the reversal of Mr. Morton's conviction, his lawyers say prosecutors withheld this and other exculpatory evidence from his original defense lawyers and from the trial judge despite orders to turn it over. In court filings, the prosecutors have denied accusations of wrongdoing.
Since 1994, DNA tests have exonerated 44 Texas inmates, according to the Innocence Project of Texas, based in Lubbock. In the wake of those cases, Texas lawmakers have made significant reforms to criminal justice procedures to help prevent wrongful convictions. But defense lawyers and Mr. Morton's advocates argue that under antiquated Texas discovery laws, the alleged injustices that robbed him of 25 years could still happen.
"Michael's struggle would be in vain if we didn't think soberly about what went wrong in his case and how it can be fixed," said Nina Morrison, senior staff lawyer for the Innocence Project, which worked on Mr. Morton's case and which is based in New York.
The landmark 1963 United States Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland requires prosecutors to provide defendants with exculpatory evidence - information that could prove their innocence. But Texas law does not define "exculpatory evidence," and there is no statewide standard; prosecutors or trial judges typically decide what qualifies. State law does not require prosecutors to automatically share with defense lawyers even basic information like police reports and witness statements.
Many prosecutors, including district attorneys in Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and Austin, have adopted open-file policies that require their lawyers to share all their evidence with the defense.
Tarrant County adopted its policy in the 1970s, said Jack Strickland, a former defense lawyer who is deputy chief in the district attorney's criminal division.
"The more serious the case, the more serious the potential consequences," Mr. Strickland said. "We wanted to have as much transparency as we could because of the stakes involved."
In 2010, the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel, a committee created to recommend new laws that might prevent wrongful convictions, urged legislators to adopt a mandatory statewide discovery policy. Seven of Texas' first 39 DNA exonerations involved evidence suppression or other prosecutorial misconduct, according to the panel's report.
The panel - named after a Lubbock man charged with rape who died in prison before DNA evidence exonerated him - told lawmakers that Texas should follow the example of other states that require lawyers on both sides to share information in criminal cases.
"We have 254 counties in this state, and potentially 254 ways of deciding what the defense will see prior to trial," said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service and a member of the Tim Cole panel.
Since 2007, lawmakers have proposed more than a half-dozen measures that would have expanded access to discovery. None have passed.
Senator Rodney Ellis, Democrat of Houston, who is also chairman of the Innocence Project, said prosecutors had worked to stymie the measures. The opposition, he said, reflects an attitude among many Texas prosecutors that a conviction equals a win.
"The role of the prosecutor is to discover the truth," said Mr. Ellis, who is also a lawyer. "But oftentimes there's more interest in getting a conviction."
He pointed to a recent decision of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association to honor a prosecutor who had intervened to stop a court hearing meant to examine whether Cameron Todd Willingham was innocent. Mr. Willingham was executed in 2004 for the 1991 arson fire that killed his three young daughters. Numerous scientists have since discredited the evidence used to convict him.
"I think the Morton case is going to be a catalyst for moving some of those reforms forward," Mr. Ellis said.
John Bradley, the Williamson County district attorney, whom Gov. Rick Perry appointed in 2009 to lead an independent panel charged with reviewing forensic evidence in criminal cases, was an ardent opponent of re-examining the Willingham case.
Mr. Bradley has also most recently been in charge of the Morton prosecution. For more than six years he opposed the DNA testing that led to Mr. Morton's release from prison last week and an agreement by prosecutors to seek to have his conviction overturned. He also resisted efforts by Mr. Morton's lawyers to use public-information laws to gain access to evidence in the original prosecutors' files.
Mr. Bradley publicly derided the lawyers' efforts to prove that a "mystery killer" killed Christine Morton.
Mr. Bradley said last week that he had resisted efforts to test the DNA for good-faith reasons that he could not discuss because of the continuing investigation.
Prosecutors, though, have not been the only ones to object to expanding discovery, said Rob Kepple, executive director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. Defense lawyers, he said, have objected to legislation that would also require them to turn over evidence to prosecutors.
What is more, Mr. Kepple said, a new discovery law would not have prevented the kind of misconduct alleged in the Morton case. If a prosecutor or investigator decides to withhold key information even in the face of the Brady rules that already require its release, he said, a new state law will not spur their compliance.
"If somebody didn't play fair back then," he said, "I'm not sure exactly what law we change today to address it."
Indeed, in Tarrant County, where the open-file policy has long been in place, Mr. Strickland said there had been two instances in which a prosecutor suppressed evidence to help secure death penalty convictions.
The same lawyer worked on both cases and is no longer employed at the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office, he said.
"You can't discount the possibility that somebody is going to come in and make a conscious decision to do something wrong," Mr. Strickland said.
Despite that aberration, he said, the open-file policy has only helped Tarrant County.
It is an advantage for defense lawyers, since they can quickly access information they need to represent their clients, he said, and it helps prosecutors because they do not have to spend time and money fighting in court over access to evidence.
"It's a downside only if you think winning is everything," Mr. Strickland said. "And winning is not everything."
bgrissom@texastribune.org
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13) California Prison Hunger Strike Resumes as Sides Dig In
"The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers. In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because 'their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat.' But Ms. Weills said other prisoners told her that those four did so because they could no longer endure conditions at the administrative housing unit where they had been moved. 'We're freezing,' Ronald Yandell, one of the strike leaders, said to Ms. Weills this week. 'The air-conditioner is blowing. It's like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It's torture. They're trying to break us.'"
By IAN LOVETT
October 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/hunger-strike-resumes-in-california-prisons.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - When inmates across California's state prisons went on a hunger strike in July, prison officials negotiated with them, ultimately reaching an agreement to bring the strike to an end after three weeks.
But since inmates resumed the strike last week in continued protest against conditions of prolonged isolation, things have gone differently: the corrections department has cracked down, trying to isolate the strike leaders, some of whom say they no longer trust the department and are hoping to push the governor to enact reforms.
"I'm ready to take this all the way," J. Angel Martinez, one of the strike leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison, said in a message conveyed through a lawyer this week. "We are sick and tired of living like this and willing to die if that's what it takes."
This time, though, both sides have shown less inclination to compromise, and no negotiations between the strike leaders and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have taken place since the strike resumed.
An internal memo from George J. Giurbino, director of the Division of Adult Institutions for the department, outlined new, more aggressive processes for dealing with mass hunger strikes.
The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers.
In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because "their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat."
The animosity goes both ways, suggesting no easy resolution to a situation in which inmates are protesting being kept in isolation in excess of 22 hours a day, part of an attempt to hamper gangs.
In late July, inmates ended their initial strike after officials agreed to concessions for prisoners in security housing units, including allowing them wall calendars, hobby items like drawing paper and a comprehensive review of how inmates are placed in these isolation units.
The new hunger strike drew 4,000 people last week across the state. But that number had drifted to fewer than 800 by Friday, according to corrections officials, as the department has moved to isolate participants from the general prison population.
Terry Thornton, a department spokeswoman, said that the promised reforms were continuing as promised, and officials remained willing to negotiate, but that leaders had not approached them with a new list of demands.
"Everything we said we were going to do, we did," Ms. Thornton said. "We are kind of puzzled about why this action was taken again. The review takes time, but we are on track."
Mistrust of the department is fervent among strike leaders, according to Anne Weills, a lawyer who met with four of them at Pelican Bay. Prisoner rights advocates have also accused the department of low-balling the number of prisoners involved in the strike, arguing that as many as 12,000 inmates had participated.
Ms. Thornton confirmed that 15 inmates at Pelican Bay had been moved to an administrative housing unit because they were identified as coercing other inmates into participation. She also said that all the strike leaders at Pelican Bay were confirmed gang members, and that four of the 11 leaders had ended their strikes.
But Ms. Weills said other prisoners told her that those four did so because they could no longer endure conditions at the administrative housing unit where they had been moved.
"We're freezing," Ronald Yandell, one of the strike leaders, said to Ms. Weills this week. "The air-conditioner is blowing. It's like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It's torture. They're trying to break us."
Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the corrections department, said he did not know why the four leaders had ended their strike.
Sharon Dolovich, a professor of prison law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the department's response to the second strike reflected court cases in the last 25 years that had given officials more discretion to clamp down on inmate rights.
"Before, they didn't want to seem inhumane, and now they're in damage control mode," she said. "They're demonstrating that they're willing to use the full scope of legal discretion to shut it down."
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14) The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good
"Almost 6.5 million people have been officially unemployed for at least six months, and another few million have dropped out of the labor force - that is, they are no longer looking for work - since 2008. These hard-core unemployed highlight the nexus between long-term and short-term economic problems. Most lost their jobs because of the recession. But many will remain without work long after the economy begins growing again."
By DAVID LEONHARDT, The New York Times Washington bureau chief.
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sunday-review/the-depression-if-only-things-were-that-good.html?ref=creditcrisis
UNDERNEATH the misery of the Great Depression, the United States economy was quietly making enormous strides during the 1930s. Television and nylon stockings were invented. Refrigerators and washing machines turned into mass-market products. Railroads became faster and roads smoother and wider. As the economic historian Alexander J. Field has said, the 1930s constituted "the most technologically progressive decade of the century."
Economists often distinguish between cyclical trends and secular trends - which is to say, between short-term fluctuations and long-term changes in the basic structure of the economy. No decade points to the difference quite like the 1930s: cyclically, the worst decade of the 20th century, and yet, secularly, one of the best.
It would clearly be nice if we could take some comfort from this bit of history. If anything, though, the lesson of the 1930s may be the opposite one. The most worrisome aspect about our current slump is that it combines obvious short-term problems - from the financial crisis - with less obvious long-term problems. Those long-term problems include a decade-long slowdown in new-business formation, the stagnation of educational gains and the rapid growth of industries with mixed blessings, including finance and health care.
Together, these problems raise the possibility that the United States is not merely suffering through a normal, if severe, downturn. Instead, it may have entered a phase in which high unemployment is the norm.
On Friday, the Labor Department reported that job growth was mediocre in September and that unemployment remained at 9.1 percent. In a recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, forecasters said the rate was not likely to fall below 7 percent until at least 2015. After that, they predicted, it would rarely fall below 6 percent, even in good times.
Not so long ago, 6 percent was considered a disappointingly high unemployment rate. From 1995 to 2007, the jobless rate exceeded 6 percent for only a single five-month period in 2003 - and it never topped 7 percent.
"We've got a double-whammy effect," says John C. Haltiwanger, an economics professor at the University of Maryland. The cyclical crisis has come on top of the secular one, and the two are now feeding off each other.
In the most likely case, the United States has fallen into a period somewhat similar to the one that Europe has endured for parts of the last generation; it is rich but struggling. A high unemployment rate will feed fears of national decline. The political scene may be tumultuous, as it already is. Many people will find themselves shut out of the work force.
Almost 6.5 million people have been officially unemployed for at least six months, and another few million have dropped out of the labor force - that is, they are no longer looking for work - since 2008. These hard-core unemployed highlight the nexus between long-term and short-term economic problems. Most lost their jobs because of the recession. But many will remain without work long after the economy begins growing again.
Indeed, they will themselves become a force weighing on the economy. Fairly or not, employers will be reluctant to hire them. Many with borderline health problems will end up in the federal disability program, which has become a shadow welfare program that most beneficiaries never leave.
For now, the main cause of the economic funk remains the financial crisis. The bursting of a generation-long, debt-enabled consumer bubble has left households rebuilding their balance sheets and businesses wary of hiring until they are confident that consumer spending will pick up. Even now, sales of many big-ticket items - houses, cars, appliances, many services - remain far below their pre-crisis peaks.
Although the details of every financial crisis differ, the broad patterns are similar. The typical crisis leads to almost a decade of elevated unemployment, according to oft-cited academic research by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff. Ms. Reinhart and Mr. Rogoff date the recent crisis from the summer of 2007, which would mean our economy was not even halfway through its decade of high unemployment.
Of course, making dark forecasts about the American economy, especially after a recession, can be dangerous. In just the last 50 years, doomsayers claimed that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union, Japan and Germany, only to be proved wrong each time.
This country continues to have advantages that no other country, including China, does: the world's best venture-capital network, a well-established rule of law, a culture that celebrates risk taking, an unmatched appeal to immigrants. These strengths often give rise to the next great industry, even when the strengths are less salient than the country's problems.
THAT'S part of what happened in the 1930s. It's also happened in the 1990s, when many people were worrying about a jobless recovery and economic decline. At a 1992 conference Bill Clinton convened shortly after his election to talk about the economy, participants recall, no one mentioned the Internet.
Still, the reasons for concern today are serious. Even before the financial crisis began, the American economy was not healthy. Job growth was so weak during the economic expansion from 2001 to 2007 that employment failed to keep pace with the growing population, and the share of working adults declined. For the average person with a job, income growth barely exceeded inflation.
The closest thing to a unified explanation for these problems is a mirror image of what made the 1930s so important. Then, the United States was vastly increasing its productive capacity, as Mr. Field argued in his recent book, "A Great Leap Forward." Partly because the Depression was eliminating inefficiencies but mostly because of the emergence of new technologies, the economy was adding muscle and shedding fat. Those changes, combined with the vast industrialization for World War II, made possible the postwar boom.
In recent years, on the other hand, the economy has not done an especially good job of building its productive capacity. Yes, innovations like the iPad and Twitter have altered daily life. And, yes, companies have figured out how to produce just as many goods and services with fewer workers. But the country has not developed any major new industries that employ large and growing numbers of workers.
There is no contemporary version of the 1870s railroads, the 1920s auto industry or even the 1990s Internet sector. Total economic output over the last decade, as measured by the gross domestic product, has grown more slowly than in any 10-year period during the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s or '90s.
Perhaps the most important reason, beyond the financial crisis, is the overall skill level of the work force. The United States is the only rich country in the world that has not substantially increased the share of young adults with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree over the past three decades. Some less technical measures of human capital, like the percentage of children living with two parents, have deteriorated. The country has also chosen not to welcome many scientists and entrepreneurs who would like to move here.
The relationship between skills and economic success is not an exact one, yet it is certainly strong enough to notice, and not just in the reams of peer-reviewed studies on the subject. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and much of Northern Europe have made considerable educational progress since the 1980s, for instance. Their unemployment rates, which were once higher than ours, are now lower. Within this country, the 50 most educated metropolitan areas have an average jobless rate of 7.3 percent, according to Moody's Analytics; in the 50 least educated, the average rate is 11.4 percent.
Despite the media's focus on those college graduates who are struggling, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that people with a four-year degree - who have an unemployment rate of just 4.3 percent - are barely experiencing an economic downturn.
Economic downturns do often send people streaming back to school, and this one is no exception. So there is a chance that it will lead to a surge in skill formation. Yet it seems unlikely to do nearly as much on that score as the Great Depression, which helped make high school universal. High school, of course, is free. Today's educational frontier, college, is not. In fact, it has become more expensive lately, as state cutbacks have led to tuition increases.
Beyond education, the American economy seems to be suffering from a misallocation of resources. Some of this is beyond our control. China's artificially low currency has nudged us toward consuming too much and producing too little. But much of the misallocation is homegrown.
In particular, three giant industries - finance, health care and housing - now include large amounts of unproductive capacity. Housing may have shrunk, but it is still a bigger, more subsidized sector in this country than in many others.
Health care is far larger, with the United States spending at least 50 percent more per person on medical care than any other country, without getting vastly better results. (Some aspects of our care, like certain cancer treatments, are better, while others, like medical error rates, are worse.) The contrast suggests that a significant portion of medical spending is wasted, be it on approaches that do not make people healthier or on insurance-company bureaucracy.
In finance, trading volumes have boomed in recent decades, yet it is unclear how much all the activity has lifted living standards. Paul A. Volcker, the former Fed chairman, has mischievously said that the only useful recent financial innovation was the automated teller machine. Critics like Mr. Volcker argue that much of modern finance amounts to arbitrage, in which technology and globalization have allowed traders to profit from being the first to notice small price differences.
IN the process, Wall Street has captured a growing share of the world's economic pie - thereby increasing inequality - without doing much to expand the pie. It may even have shrunk the pie, given that a new International Monetary Fund analysis found that higher inequality leads to slower economic growth.
The common question with these industries is whether they are using resources that could do more economic good elsewhere. "The health care problem is very similar to the finance problem," says Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist, "in that incredibly talented people are wasting their talent on something that is essentially a zero-sum game."
In the short term, finance, health care and housing provide jobs, as their lobbyists are quick to point out. But it is hard to see how the jobs of the future will spring from unnecessary back surgery and garden-variety arbitrage. They differ from the growth engines of the past, which delivered fundamental value - faster transportation or new knowledge - and let other industries then build off those advances.
The United States has long overcome its less dynamic industries by replacing them with more dynamic ones. The decline of the horse and buggy, difficult as it may have been for people in the business, created no macroeconomic problems. The trouble today is that those new industries don't seem to be arriving very quickly.
The rate at which new companies are created has been falling for most of the last decade. So has the pace at which existing companies add positions. "The current problem is not that we have tons of layoffs," Mr. Katz says. "It's that we don't have much hiring."
If history repeats itself, this situation will eventually turn around. Maybe some American scientist in a laboratory somewhere is about to make a breakthrough. Maybe an entrepreneur is on the verge of creating a great new product. Maybe the recent health care and financial-regulation laws will squeeze the bloat.
For now, the evidence for such optimism remains scant. And the economy remains millions of jobs away from being even moderately healthy.
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15) Protest Spurs Online Dialogue on Inequity
"These Occupy pages around the country are being used not only to echo the issues being discussed in New York about jobs, corporate greed and budget cuts, but also to talk about other problems closer to home. In Tennessee, for example, there is an Occupy Tennessee Facebook page, as well as pages for Occupy Memphis, Occupy Knoxville, Occupy Clarksville, Occupy Chattanooga, Occupy Murfreesboro and Occupy Nashville, which helped get out the word about a lunchtime protest in Nashville's Legislative Plaza on Friday that drew several hundred protesters with some bearing signs with the movement's motto: 'We are the 99 percent.'"
By JENNIFER PRESTON
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/nyregion/wall-street-protest-spurs-online-conversation.html?scp=1&sq=Protest%20Spurs%20Online%20Dialogue%20on%20Inequity&st=cse
What began as a small group of protesters expressing their grievances about economic inequities last month from a park in New York City has evolved into an online conversation that is spreading across the country on social media platforms.
Inspired by the populist message of the group known as Occupy Wall Street, more than 200 Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have sprung up in dozens of cities during the past week, seeking volunteers for local protests and fostering discussion about the group's concerns.
Some 900 events have been set up on Meetup.com, and blog posts and photographs from all over the country are popping up on the WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr from people who see themselves as victims of not just a sagging economy but also economic injustice.
"I don't want to be rich. I don't want to live a lavish lifestyle," wrote a woman on Tumblr, describing herself as a college student worried about the burden of student debt. "I'm worried. I'm scared, thinking about the future shakes me. I hope this works. I really hope this works."
The online conversation has grown at the same time that street protests have taken place in several other cities last week, including Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington. A Web site, Occupy Together, is trying to aggregate the online conversations and the off-line activities.
"We are not coordinating anything," said Justin Wedes, 26, a former high school science teacher from Brooklyn who helps manage one of the movement's main Twitter accounts, @OccupyWallStNYC. "It is all grass roots. We are just trying to use it to disseminate information, tell stories, ask for donations and to give people a voice."
To help get the word out about a rally at 3 p.m. Saturday in Washington Square Park, the group turned to its Facebook and Twitter accounts. "If you are one of the 99 percent, this is your meeting," the Facebook invitation said. Nearly 700 people replied on Facebook saying that they would be there.
More than 1,000 demonstrators arrived at Washington Square Park for the rally, many of them after marching from the encampment they had established three weeks ago in Zuccotti Park, in Lower Manhattan.
During their march, protesters kept to the sidewalks and out of traffic in a purposeful attempt to prevent arrests. Once at Washington Square Park, they held meetings until the early evening, when the crowd dispersed and protesters made their way back to Zuccotti Park, where they were welcomed with loud cheers.
While people in New York are still dominating the conversation on Twitter, an analysis of Twitter data on Friday showed that almost half of the posts were made in other parts of the country, primarily in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, as well as Texas, Florida and Oregon, according to Trendrr, a social media analytics firm.
Mark Ghuneim, founder and chief executive officer of Trendrr, said the Twitter conversation was producing an average of 10,000 to 15,000 posts an hour on Friday about Occupy Wall Street, with most people sharing links from news sites, Tumblr, YouTube and Trendsmap.
Washington's National Air and Space Museum was closed after demonstrators tried to enter the building with signs.
"This is more of a growing conversation than something massive as we have seen from hurricanes and with people passing away," Mr. Ghuneim said. "The conversation for this has a strong and steady heartbeat that is spreading. We're seeing the national dialogue morph into pockets of local and topic-based conversation."
In Egypt, the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page was started 10 months before the uprising last January to protest police brutality. The page had more than 400,000 members before it was used to help propel protesters into Tahrir Square. Occupy Wall Street's Facebook page began a few weeks ago and has 138,000 members.
Yet it represents only a sliver of the conversation taking place on Facebook about the group's anticorporate message. Unlike in Egypt, where people found one another on one Facebook page, geographically based Occupy Facebook pages have cropped up, reflecting the loosely organized approach of the group.
These Occupy pages around the country are being used not only to echo the issues being discussed in New York about jobs, corporate greed and budget cuts, but also to talk about other problems closer to home.
In Tennessee, for example, there is an Occupy Tennessee Facebook page, as well as pages for Occupy Memphis, Occupy Knoxville, Occupy Clarksville, Occupy Chattanooga, Occupy Murfreesboro and Occupy Nashville, which helped get out the word about a lunchtime protest in Nashville's Legislative Plaza on Friday that drew several hundred protesters with some bearing signs with the movement's motto: "We are the 99 percent."
The center of the movement's media operation is in Zuccotti Park, where several hundred people have been camping since Sept. 17.
On Friday morning, operation central consisted of a few tables and chairs clustered around a generator, with a few volunteers editing video, posting updates for the group's social media sites on laptops and staffing the live video feed for a channel called Global Revolution on Livestream.com.
On YouTube, at least 10,000 videos tagged "occupy wall street" have been uploaded in the past month. A video showing female protesters being fencing in and sprayed with pepper spray by the police is the most viewed of the protest, according to Matt McLernon, a spokesman for YouTube.
In addition to the videos posted from New York, Mr. McLernon said, videos have also been uploaded from Boston, Seattle, San Antonio and St. Louis, as well as from Oklahoma and Vermont.
Showing that YouTube can be used by both sides, the New York Police Department has uploaded its own videos of the protests on YouTube, including of the massive demonstration at the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1 that led to 700 arrests.
But the group is not relying exclusively on social media platforms or the Internet to deliver its message. The second edition of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, a four-page broadsheet, was published on Saturday.
Al Baker and Anna M. Phillips contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 8, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of one of the movement's main Twitter accounts. It is @OccupyWallStNYC, not @OccupyWallStreetNYC.
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16) Protesters Against Wall Street
New York Times Editorial
"The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings - the very definition of downward mobility."
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/protesters-against-wall-street.html
As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message - and the solutions - should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.
At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.
The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings - the very definition of downward mobility.
The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters' own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.
The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials' hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.
Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.
When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today's deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.
That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.
Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.
Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.
No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters - including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers' rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.
It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That's the job of the nation's leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.
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17) Eleven Facts you Need to Know about the Nation's Biggest Banks
By Pat Garofalo, Think Progress
October 8, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/7787-11-facts-about-biggest-banks
The Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City more than three weeks ago have now spread across the country. The choice of Wall Street as the focal point for the protests - as even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said - makes sense due to the big bank malfeasance that led to the Great Recession.
While the Dodd-Frank financial reform law did a lot to ensure that a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis won't occur - through regulation of derivatives, a new consumer protection agency, and new powers for the government to dismantle failing banks - the biggest banks still have a firm grip on the financial system, even more so than before the 2008 financial crisis. Here are eleven facts that you need to know about the nation's biggest banks:
* Bank profits are highest since before the recession ...: According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the first quarter of this year were "the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007." JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.
* ... even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers.
* Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits: The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which is actually down from before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.
* Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: Due to the failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008 crisis, the nation's biggest banks - including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo - are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.
* The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.
* The 10 biggest banks hold 60 percent of bank assets: In the 1980s, the 10 biggest banks controlled 22 percent of total bank assets. Today, they control 60 percent.
* The six biggest banks hold assets equal to 63 percent of the country's GDP: In 1995, the six biggest banks in the country held assets equal to about 17 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product. Now their assets equal 63 percent of GDP.
* The five biggest banks hold 95 percent of derivatives: Nearly the entire market in derivatives - the credit instruments that helped blow up some of the nation's biggest banks as well as mega-insurer AIG - is dominated by just five firms: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.
* Banks cost households nearly $20 trillion in wealth: Almost $20 trillion in wealth was destroyed by the Great Recession, and total family wealth is still down "$12.8 trillion (in 2011 dollars) from June 2007 - its last peak."
* Big banks don't lend to small businesses: The New Rules Project notes that the country's 20 biggest banks "devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business."
* Big banks paid 5,000 bonuses of at least $1 million in 2008: According to the New York Attorney General's office, "nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008."
In the last few decades, regulations on the biggest banks have been systematically eliminated, while those banks engineered more and more ways to both rip off customers and turn ever-more complex trading instruments into ever-higher profits. It makes perfect sense, then, that a movement calling for an economy that works for everyone would center its efforts on an industry that exemplifies the opposite.
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18) Against the Institution: A Warning for 'Occupy Wall Street'
Posted by Andrew Gavin Marshall _
October 3, 2011
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2011/10/03/against-the-institution-a-warning-for-occupy-wall-street/
While I fully endorse the efforts and actions of the Occupy Wall Street protests, now emerging internationally, there are concerns which need to be addressed and kept in mind as the movement moves forward.
The process through which a potentially powerful movement may be co-opted and controlled is slight and subtle. If Occupy Wall Street hopes to strive for the 99%, it must not submit to the 1%, in any capacity.
The Occupy movement must prevent what happened to the Tea Party movement to happen to it. Whatever ideological stance you may have, the Tea Party movement started as a grass roots movement, largely a result of anti-Federal Reserve protests. They were quickly co-opted with philanthropic money and political party endorsements.
For the Occupy Movement to build up and become a true force for change, it must avoid and reject the organizational and financial 'contributions' of institutions: be they political parties, non-profits, or philanthropic foundations. The efforts are subtle, but effective: they seek to organize, professionalize, and institutionalize a movement, push forward the issues they desire, which render the movement useless for true liberation, as these are among the very institutions the movement should be geared against.
This is not simply about "Wall Street," this is about POWER. Those who have power, and those who don't. When those who have power offer a hand in your struggle, their other hand holds a dagger. Remain grassroots, remain decentralized, remain outside and away from party politics, remain away from financial dependence. Freedom is not merely in the aim, it's in the action.
The true struggle is not left versus right, democrat versus republican, liberal versus conservative, or libertarian versus socialist. The true struggle is that of people against the institution: the State, the banks, the central banking system, the corporation, the international financial institutions, the military, the political parties, the mainstream media, philanthropic foundations, think tanks, university, education, psychiatry, the legal system, the church, et. al.
The transfer of power from one institution to another does not solve the crisis of our 'institutional society,' whereby a few have come to dominate so much, to concentrate so much power at the expense of everyone else having so little. True liberation will result only from opposition to 'the institution' as an entity. Placating power from one institution to another renders resistance ineffective. The power structures must be discredited, and power must be distributed to the people, through voluntary associations, communal groupings, and people-powered (and people-funded!) initiatives.
In order to survive as a movement, money will become a necessity. Do not turn to the non-profits and philanthropic foundations for support. The philanthropies, which fund and created the non-profits and NGOs, were themselves created to engage in 'social engineering': to 'manufacture consent' among the governed, and create consensus among the governors. The philanthropies (particularly those of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller) fund social movements and protest organizations so as to steer them into directions which are safe for the elites. The philanthropies are themselves run by the elite, founded by bankers and industrialists striving to preserve their place at the top of the social structure in the midst of potentially revolutionary upheaval. As the president of the Ford Foundation once said, "Everything the foundation does is to make the world safe for capitalism."
Money from philanthropies will organize the movement into a more professionalized entity, will direct its efforts around the promotion of legalistic reform, making slight changes to the system's symptoms, promoting particular legislation, rallying around very specific issues removed from their global historical context. The effect is to turn anti-system revolutionaries into legalistic reformers. With such funding, movement organizers are drawn into the world of NGOs, international conferences, international institutions, aid agencies, and mainstream political participation. The leaders of the movement become professionalized and successful, both in prestige and finances. Thus, their own personal position becomes dependent upon promoting reform, not revolution; on maintaining the system (with minor changes to the aesthetic), not moving against it. The movement itself, then, would be institutionalized.
For the finances to grow without the threat of institutional dominance, the money must come from the people. A truly populist cause could be funded by the people. Keep the people in charge.
If we truly want freedom and liberation, we must begin to act free and liberated. If we want the 'true liberation,' we must understand the true system of power that confines, oppresses, segregates, exploits, impoverishes, and controls us. It is not a matter of the state or the banks or the corporations. It is a matter of the institution, itself. The structures of power must be struggled against so that we may come to liberate humanity from all that confines it, and experience what our true 'human nature' is.
If one studies mice in a maze, no matter for how long or what the maze is built of, looks like, feels like, you cannot deduce the nature of the mouse separate from that of the maze. Break down the maze and you may observe the true nature of the mouse. We have been living, always, within a maze. The walls are constructed as institutions which direct, steer, manipulate, define and segregate us from one another.
First we must tear down the barriers that bind us from ourselves, and then we may truly understand what it is to be human and free.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is Project Manager of The People's Book Project
http://thepeoplesbookproject.com/
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19) Local police forces are now little armies. Why?
By John Hanrahan
hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org
ASK THIS | October 06, 2011
http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/64-64/7792-local-police-forces-are-now-little-armies-why
More and more, in dealing with nonviolent political protesters police across America show up in battlefield dress with intimidating military gear supplied by the Pentagon and Homeland Security. Writer John Hanrahan says reporters, instead of ignoring this ominous development, should ask local, regional and national leaders: Do we need this crap?
Last March, when some 500 activists arrived at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia to protest the abusive treatment that Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused leaker of secret government documents to the Wikileaks website, was being subjected to while incarcerated there, they were confronted by a heavily-armed, riot-geared phalanx of dozens of state and local police, many of them on horseback for added measure.
I was there and wondered what in the world was going on.
These police in their black Darth Vader-like gear weren't exactly facing a gun-wielding horde, or guerrillas with grenade launchers or a mob threatening to storm the base. Instead, they were confronting unarmed, nonviolent protesters who included older military veterans, recent Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, government workers, the ever-active antiwar women (and men) of Code Pink, members of various anti-war and anti-torture groups, lawyer observers and a smattering of reporters mainly from alternative media. Did the police think this assembly was going to charge into a heavily-fortified military base, overpower well-armed and well-trained Marines, and spring Manning from solitary confinement?
Since then I found out police often dress like Darth Vader at protest rallies. It's a tactic to discourage dissent, with battlefield equipment supplied by the Pentagon and other equipment paid for in part with Homeland Security funds.
Increasingly around the country, noted civil liberties attorney Bill Quigley told Nieman Watchdog this summer, "What we have had is a militarization of the police response to nonviolent demonstrations. You attend one of those rallies and you could get the impression that it's unpatriotic to protest, that you're doing something wrong, that you're some sort of security threat."
Compared to the Vietnam war era, Quigley said, police around the country use more intimidating tactics these days, which likely discourages or scares off some people who might otherwise want to participate in protests. During the Vietnam war, he said, there was "pushback" - often violent - by police at demonstrations, but the police then were not decked out in full-blown military regalia and carrying the often heavy weaponry that can be the case today.
The militarization of the nation's police forces is one of the most under-reported stories in the mainstream U.S. press. The issue sometimes surfaces in connection with SWAT teams conducting drug raids, particularly when police or Drug Enforcement Administration agents bust down the wrong door and frighten innocent occupants half to death and even injure them and destroy property. But rarely are there news stories questioning the propriety of these police forces becoming, in effect, little domestic armies. And the increase in anti-terrorism fear-mongering to justify the use of heavily-armed, riot-geared police at political demonstrations has the added dimension of providing a chilling effect on people's exercise of their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and to petition their government.
It's time reporters on all news organizations begin going to their local and state police departments and asking: How much of this crap do you have, and why do you need it?
Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and director of the law clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans, has served as counsel to a number of public interest organizations on civil liberties, constitutional rights and civil disobedience issues. In that capacity and until recently as the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, he frequently monitors demonstrations. Quigley said that around the country, protests, both small and large, are often overseen by a "heavy-duty police presence," replete with "those Ninja-Turtle-type outfits, special batons, shields, kneepads, surveillance cameras," etc. Police are sometimes on horseback (as they were at Quantico), astride "animals that are specially trained for crowd control" and that can be especially daunting to older and disabled people who aren't so nimble on their feet. Police also often try to orchestrate the protests, imposing new rules as they go along (as was the case at Quantico) - and, in some cases, using sound trucks to issue orders to control marchers.
While monitoring protests in various communities, Quigley said he has often asked state and local police why they turn out in their military gear for protests involving several hundred people engaging in a peaceful march or rally. Speaking as if from the same playbook, the answer they always give, Quigley said, is that it's not the peaceful demonstrators they are worried about but the fear that militants bent on violence will infiltrate and turn a peaceable demonstration into street fighting and property destruction.
To Quigley and others who have attended protests, this is pure bunkum.
"When they come dressed like that, they are not there to protect and defend our constitutional rights to peaceably assemble," Quigley said. "They are there to intimidate. Every demonstration is like a practice-run for state and local police to try out their new equipment and devices. They're all getting the federal anti-terrorist money, so if you go to a peaceful protest in Georgia, or Pittsburgh or New York or other places, you'll likely see the police using that as a pretext for a military-like response."
Overall, Quigley said, since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "it is absolutely true that people's ability to protest, as well as the response of the government to those protests, is different than it was before. It's tougher to organize and hold a protest" these days with police and city officials setting harsh terms for demonstrations - in effect, creating penned-in "free-speech zones," arbitrary boundaries within which protesters must stay or face arrest. The police desire for crowd control and security takes precedence over the Constitution.
At Quantico, even after the police had closed the roads off to traffic for miles, they still ordered marchers to stay on the side of the road and not go into the street. When a designated contingent of six protesters, including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, asked to be allowed as a sign of respect to put flowers on a replica of the Iwo Jima Memorial outside the base on federal property, the police at first agreed and then reneged. They told Ellsberg and the others that Quantico officials wouldn't allow them to go right up to the World War II memorial - which is normally open to the public - but they could stand behind the police barrier 10 feet or more away and throw the flowers at the memorial. For absolute arbitrariness and callousness, the police and military orchestration of what was meant to be a solemn moment at a monument that honors Marines who died in battle is hard to top. Did they think the protesters were going to deface the memorial? That the 80-year-old Ellsberg was going to make a dash onto the base? The sheer authoritarianism embodied in this situation is symptomatic of the tragic diminishment of civil liberties since 9/11, when homeland security and the be-afraid, be-very-afraid syndrome took over.
Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears - in a well-done story that was a rare instance of that newspaper actually covering a protest by progressive activists - quoted former Army colonel and State Department official Ann Wright as saying: "They wouldn't even let us get up to the memorial...It was disrespectful."
Fears reported this led the "fed up" Wright, Ellsberg and 28 others to sit down in the middle of Jefferson Davis Highway in an "impromptu sit-in" that "led to a tense standoff between demonstrators and Manassas, Prince William County and Virginia state police, who were in riot gear and on horseback, with some carrying automatic assault weapons." Some 30 protesters, including Wright and Ellsberg, were arrested.
I wondered that day, and since, if the oh-so-grim assembled contingent of Virginia's finest would actually use such assault weapons if they determined the protesters had somehow gotten further "out of line." What if that peaceable sit-in on the road - a road which, as noted, by then had been closed off for miles by police, so the sit-down obstructed absolutely no traffic - had become a little more tense? Would the men in black have considered opening fire with their automatic weapons? It's like the "Chekhov gun" principle for the theater: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Likewise with the police in real life. (Or the Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State and the Mississippi State Police at Jackson State in 1970.) Otherwise, what's the point of all that weaponry against unarmed, nonviolent people?
The last time I had seen such a menacing gathering of firepower in the midst of civilians was in Guatemala City in 1971, when that country's repressive, U.S.-backed government had declared a state of siege and soldiers with machine guns were stationed on street corners. And I wasn't the only one at Quantico that day who had anxious thoughts about the police.
As reported on independent journalist Peter Tucker's website, The FightBack, one gutsy 27-year-old Army veteran of the Iraq war - who knows his way around weapons, and who was in uniform that day and wearing some of the medals he had been awarded - verbally confronted the police about their armed-to-the-teeth appearance:
"Zach Choate, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace, went down the line asking one black-clad officer after another, 'Can you look at me in the eyes?' Behind their shields and under their heavy armor, only the officers' eyes revealed their vulnerability, their youth. Each of the officers averted his gaze, unable to maintain eye contact with Choate.
"How do you feel about what's going on today, [about] the fact that peaceful protesters right now are about to get arrested for telling the truth?" asked Choate of the officers. "Nobody is armed [yet] I see [your] weapons. I see gas masks, handcuffs, all ready to take violence on all us peaceful protesters."
(View this dramatic video by Washington-based political and human rights video producer Eddie Becker to see the riot-clad police, the police efforts to orchestrate the protest, Zach Choate's challenge to the police, some of the arrests, interviews and excerpts from speeches at that Quantico rally.)
Despite the arms race of police departments around the country, very little is written or said in the press about this militarization, whose negative effects fall primarily on African-American, Latino and other minority communities in raids in the infamous "war on drugs." Radley Balko, senior writer and investigative reporter for the Huffington Post, has written more extensively and authoritatively than anyone about the dangers of police militarization, which has picked up even more steam in the last decade as cities and towns get arms and equipment under the guise of preparing to fight terrorism.
As Balko wrote recently on the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, "The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It's dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, 'Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.'..."
Balko observed that after 9/11, in addition to the high-tech weaponry, "police departments in some cities, including Washington, D.C., also switched to battle dress uniforms (BDUs) instead of the traditional police uniform. Critics say even subtle changes like a more militarized uniform can change both public perception of the police and how police see their own role in the community." In this regard, Balko quoted from a letter that retired police sergeant Bill Donelly wrote to the editor of the Washington Post: "One tends to throw caution to the wind when wearing 'commando-chic' regalia, a bulletproof vest with the word 'POLICE' emblazoned on both sides, and when one is armed with high tech weaponry."
Balko traces the trend toward militarization of police forces to the early years of the Reagan administration when the president "and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment." This measure, he wrote, "authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war-related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country." This involvement of the military in domestic drug matters came despite the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the government from using the U.S. military in domestic policing.
Nevertheless, Balko wrote, every president and congress since Reagan - Republican and Democratic, alike - "have continued to carve holes in that law, or at least find ways around it, mostly in the name of the drug war." And while these new policies did establish new ways to involve the military in domestic policing matters, "the much more widespread and problematic trend has been to make our domestic police departments more like the military," he wrote.
Especially accelerating this trend toward militarization of police agencies, Balko said, was a 1994 law authorizing the Pentagon to donate surplus military equipment to local police departments. From 1994-1997 alone, National Review reported, police forces across the country received from the Pentagon 3,800 M-16s, 2,185 M-14s, 73 grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers, as well as bayonets, tanks, helicopters and even airplanes.
In the 17 years since 1994, Balko wrote, "literally millions of pieces of equipment designed for use on a foreign battlefield have been handed over for use on U.S. streets, against U.S. citizens."
The 9/11 attacks, Balko said, "provided a new and seemingly urgent justification for further militarization of America's police departments: the need to protect the country from terrorism." In 2006 alone, he noted that a Pentagon spokesman told the Worcester, Massachusetts, Telegram & Gazette that the Department of Defense "distributed vehicles worth $15.4 million, aircraft worth $8.9 million, boats worth $6.7 million, weapons worth $1 million and 'other' items worth $110.6 million" to local police agencies.
The "global war on terror" also brought the Department of Homeland Security into the militarization of police forces picture. In recent years, Balko wrote, the DHS has "given anti-terrorism grants to police agencies across the country to purchase armored personnel carriers, including such unlikely terrorism targets as Winnebago County, Wisconsin; Longview, Texas; Tuscaloosa County, Alabama; Canyon County, Idaho; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Adrian, Michigan, and Chattanooga, Tennessee." Typically, police agencies use the grants "to purchase the Lenco Bearcat, a modified armored personnel carrier that sells for $200,000 to $300,000," which Balko wrote "has become something of a status symbol in some police departments."
Balko said the 2009 stimulus spending package also added to police militarization, with departments requesting funds "for armored vehicles, SWAT armor, machine guns, surveillance drones, helicopters, and all manner of other tactical gear and equipment."
This is the kind of equipment used at Quantico and, frequently, at other political protests. At the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in 2008, heavily-armed police were decked out in their best intimidating military riot gear as they used concussion grenades, rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, snow plows, horses and dump trucks as part of their controversial crowd-control efforts. These included what can only be called arbitrary, authoritarian, street-clearing arrests of hundreds of protesters. See especially this dramatic - and I would have to say, frightening - video, of unprovoked arrests of scores of people. And this, involving the unprovoked arrests of Amy Goodman and two producers of Pacifica's "Democracy Now."
Large numbers of reporters, broadcasters and photographers, as well as protesters and other citizens, were swept up in the arrests, which were denounced by civil libertarians and resulted in lawsuits filed by Goodman and her two producers. They recently won a $100,000 settlement from the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Secret Service. Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice said at the time of the convention mass arrests that both St. Paul and Denver, the site of the Democratic National Convention that year, had each received $50 million for new police equipment and other security assistance from Homeland Security. Cagan said that, after the two conventions were over, "We shudder to think about how the influx of new weapons and armed vehicles and everything else will be used in the neighborhoods of St. Paul and Denver..."
More recently, in August, riot-geared San Francisco and Bay Area Radio Transit (BART) police confronted demonstrators (see here and here) protesting a BART police shooting of a homeless man, a situation exacerbated when BART turned off cellphone access in its stations to block activists from coordinating the protests.
Thus far in the ongoing Wall Street protests in New York, police have not made use of military gear or high-tech weapons, although they have used pepper spray and been accused of brutality in some of the 1,000 arrests of protesters. Likewise, police in Washington, D.C., handled the recent two weeks of White House protests over the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline without using any high-tech equipment or riot gear. Mounted U.S. Park Police horses were present, but were not used in crowd control.
Former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges recently wrote on Truthdig about "the widening use of militarized police units" that "have in the last few decades amassed small strike forces that employ high-powered assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, elaborate command and control centers and attack helicopters." With the proliferation of SWAT team and other paramilitary unit assaults - an estimated 60,000 annually - Hedges observed that "in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants."
John Hanrahan is a former executive director of The Fund for Investigative Journalism and reporter for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, UPI, and other news organizations. He is now on special assignment for Nieman Watchdog.
E-mail: hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org
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20) We, the 99 Percent, Demand the End of the Wars Now
Saturday 8 October 2011
by: Robert Naiman, Truthout | News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/we-99-percent-demand-end-wars-now/1318014376
After ten years of war, now is a perfect time to act to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Friends Committee on National Legislation has set up a toll-free number for us to call Congress: 1-877-429-0678. A Congressional "supercommittee" is charged with coming up with $1.5 trillion in reduced debt over ten years, and the wars and the bloated Pentagon budget dangle before the supercommittee like overripe fruit.
A recent CBS poll shows how far out of step with the 99 percent the Pentagon's plans are. Sixty-two percent want US troops out within two years [3].
But the Pentagon wants to stay for at least 13 more years [4]<.
totally unacceptable." More protests and more phone calls will get more members of Congress talking like that.
A key lesson from Iraq for Afghanistan is this: we can force the Pentagon to eat a timetable for military withdrawal, and once we've forced them to eat it, we have the ability to force them to keep it down.
Already in May, 204 members of the House [5] - including all but eight Democrats and 26 Republicans - voted to require the president to establish a timetable for withdrawal. We just need to switch six members from that vote from no to yes to get a majority in the House for a timetable for withdrawal.
And, now, the Congress has an added incentive and opportunity to act to end the wars, because the supercommittee is considering the ten-year path of government spending. And Congress could eliminate many hundreds of billions of dollars in future government debt by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Friday morning, hundreds of peace advocates marched from Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, past the White House, to the office of drone manufacturer General Atomics, demanding an end to the wars and drone strikes. Who says the 99 percent don't have concrete demands? What could be more concrete than ending the wars?
Here is a short video from the protest: "When drones fly, children die! Stop the wars now!"
http://twitpic.com/6wja30
http://www.truth-out.org/we-99-percent-demand-end-wars-now/1318014376
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21) Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.
The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama - to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.
The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki's case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.
The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.
But the document that laid out the administration's justification - a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 - was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.
The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.
The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him.
The administration did not respond to requests for comment on this article.
The deliberations to craft the memo included meetings in the White House Situation Room involving top lawyers for the Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence agencies.
It was principally drafted by David Barron and Martin Lederman, who were both lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the time, and was signed by Mr. Barron. The office may have given oral approval for an attack on Mr. Awlaki before completing its detailed memorandum. Several news reports before June 2010 quoted anonymous counterterrorism officials as saying that Mr. Awlaki had been placed on a kill-or-capture list around the time of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. Mr. Awlaki was accused of helping to recruit the attacker for that operation.
Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was also accused of playing a role in a failed plot to bomb two cargo planes last year, part of a pattern of activities that counterterrorism officials have said showed that he had evolved from merely being a propagandist - in sermons justifying violence by Muslims against the United States - to playing an operational role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's continuing efforts to carry out terrorist attacks.
Other assertions about Mr. Awlaki included that he was a leader of the group, which had become a "cobelligerent" with Al Qaeda, and he was pushing it to focus on trying to attack the United States again. The lawyers were also told that capturing him alive among hostile armed allies might not be feasible if and when he were located.
Based on those premises, the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Awlaki was covered by the authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda that Congress enacted shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - meaning that he was a lawful target in the armed conflict unless some other legal prohibition trumped that authority.
It then considered possible obstacles and rejected each in turn.
Among them was an executive order that bans assassinations. That order, the lawyers found, blocked unlawful killings of political leaders outside of war, but not the killing of a lawful target in an armed conflict.
A federal statute that prohibits Americans from murdering other Americans abroad, the lawyers wrote, did not apply either, because it is not "murder" to kill a wartime enemy in compliance with the laws of war.
But that raised another pressing question: would it comply with the laws of war if the drone operator who fired the missile was a Central Intelligence Agency official, who, unlike a soldier, wore no uniform? The memorandum concluded that such a case would not be a war crime, although the operator might be in theoretical jeopardy of being prosecuted in a Yemeni court for violating Yemen's domestic laws against murder, a highly unlikely possibility.
Then there was the Bill of Rights: the Fourth Amendment's guarantee that a "person" cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that the government may not deprive a person of life "without due process of law."
The memo concluded that what was reasonable, and the process that was due, was different for Mr. Awlaki than for an ordinary criminal. It cited court cases allowing American citizens who had joined an enemy's forces to be detained or prosecuted in a military court just like noncitizen enemies.
It also cited several other Supreme Court precedents, like a 2007 case involving a high-speed chase and a 1985 case involving the shooting of a fleeing suspect, finding that it was constitutional for the police to take actions that put a suspect in serious risk of death in order to curtail an imminent risk to innocent people.
The document's authors argued that "imminent" risks could include those by an enemy leader who is in the business of attacking the United States whenever possible, even if he is not in the midst of launching an attack at the precise moment he is located.
There remained, however, the question of whether - when the target is known to be a citizen - it was permissible to kill him if capturing him instead were a feasible way of suppressing the threat.
Killed in the strike alongside Mr. Awlaki was another American citizen, Samir Khan, who had produced a magazine for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula promoting terrorism. He was apparently not on the targeting list, making his death collateral damage. His family has issued a statement citing the Fifth Amendment and asking whether it was necessary for the government to have "assassinated two of its citizens."
"Was this style of execution the only solution?" the Khan family asked in its statement. "Why couldn't there have been a capture and trial?"
Last month, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, delivered a speech in which he strongly denied the accusation that the administration had sometimes chosen to kill militants when capturing them was possible, saying the policy preference is to interrogate them for intelligence.
The memorandum is said to declare that in the case of a citizen, it is legally required to capture the militant if feasible - raising a question: was capturing Mr. Awlaki in fact feasible?
It is possible that officials decided last month that it was not feasible to attempt to capture him because of factors like the risk it could pose to American commandos and the diplomatic problems that could arise from putting ground forces on Yemeni soil. Still, the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan demonstrates that officials have deemed such operations feasible at times.
Last year, Yemeni commandos surrounded a village in which Mr. Awlaki was believed to be hiding, but he managed to slip away.
The administration had already expressed in public some of the arguments about issues of international law addressed by the memo, in a speech delivered in March 2010 by Harold Hongju Koh, the top State Department lawyer.
The memorandum examined whether it was relevant that Mr. Awlaki was in Yemen, far from Afghanistan. It concluded that Mr. Awlaki's geographical distance from the so-called hot battlefield did not preclude him from the armed conflict; given his presumed circumstances, the United States still had a right to use force to defend itself against him.
As to whether it would violate Yemen's sovereignty to fire a missile at someone on Yemeni soil, Yemen's president secretly granted the United States that permission, as secret diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks have revealed.
The memorandum did assert that other limitations on the use of force under the laws of war - like avoiding the use of disproportionate force that would increase the possibility of civilian deaths - would constrain any operation against Mr. Awlaki.
That apparently constrained the attack when it finally came. Details about Mr. Awlaki's location surfaced about a month ago, American officials have said, but his hunters delayed the strike until he left a village and was on a road away from populated areas.
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22) Artists Occupy Wall Street for a 24-Hour Show
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 9, 2011, 11:33 am
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/artists-occupy-wall-street-for-a-24-hour-show/?hp
For weeks, a growing collection of protesters have tried to get their grievances heard on Wall Street - even if the police have prevented them from establishing a physical presence on the fabled street.
On Saturday night, the Occupy Wall Street movement managed to gain a temporary foothold on Wall Street, courtesy of an art show partly inspired by the group's protests.
The show was held inside a landmark building built in 1914 as the headquarters of J.P. Morgan, across from the New York Stock Exchange; it has been empty for about five years.
The show, called No Comment, was scheduled to be up for only 24 hours, from Saturday evening until Sunday evening. It combined art that addressed a wide variety of political themes with pieces that were derived directly from the recent protests.
The organizers included Marika Maioroa, who arranged to use the former bank building in September for a show reflecting on the events of Sept. 11, 2001; and Anna Harrah, one of those who had been participating in three weeks of protests, aimed at criticizing inequities in the financial system.
The idea for the show came, Ms. Maioroa said, when her September show was disrupted to some degree by the maze of metal barricades set up by the police to help control marches by protesters.
She joined with Ms. Harrah, who had joined Occupy Wall Street's art and culture committee. The two put out a call for submissions and ended up with dozens of pieces of work, including paintings, illustrations, photographs and video installations.
Items inspired by the protests included a collection of cardboard signs created by demonstrators, a large spray-painted banner reading "Occupy Wall Street," and a plate that had been at the protesters' stronghold at Zuccotti Park, which carried the message, "If you need money take some," and also held a handful of dollar bills.
One of the artists who assisted in putting the show together, Lee Wells, contributed an installation consisting of two tents and American flags. It was a commentary, he said, on the fact that the police had decreed that the protesters sleeping in Zuccotti Park could not erect tents.
Ms. Maioroa said that some of the pieces of art could be sold at a silent auction, with most of the proceeds going to the artists but some being donated to Occupy Wall Street, or to her own organization, Loft in the Red Zone, which had rented the raw, cavernous space inside the Morgan building.
As crowds strolled through the show on Saturday night, three men with badges walked past barricades set up outside, entered the show and looked around. Soon, the streets outside were filled with police vehicles and uniformed officers.
Inside the gallery, Ms. Harrah gazed at the crowd and reflected on the irony of the show's setting.
"As soon as I saw this place, I said let's make something happen here,"
she said. "It seems only right to occupy this space."
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23) Daughter of 'Dirty War,' Raised by Man Who Killed Her Parents
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?ref=world
BUENOS AIRES - Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where "subversives" had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his "slamming his gun on the table," she said.
It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father - nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.
Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said.
He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her - María Sol - after falsifying her birth records.
The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation's top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.
Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina's dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.
The trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church.
The abduction of an estimated 500 babies was one of the most traumatic chapters of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The frantic effort by mothers and grandmothers to locate their missing children has never let up. It was the one issue that civilian presidents elected after 1983 did not excuse the military for, even as amnesty was granted for other "dirty war" crimes.
"Even the many Argentines who considered the amnesty a necessary evil were unwilling to forgive the military for this," said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.
In Latin America, the baby thefts were largely unique to Argentina's dictatorship, Mr. Vivanco said. There was no such effort in neighboring Chile's 17-year dictatorship.
One notable difference was the role of the Catholic Church. In Argentina the church largely supported the military government, while in Chile it confronted the government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and sought to expose its human rights crimes, Mr. Vivanco said.
Priests and bishops in Argentina justified their support of the government on national security concerns, and defended the taking of children as a way to ensure they were not "contaminated" by leftist enemies of the military, said Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize-winning human rights advocate who has investigated dozens of disappearances and testified at the trial last month.
Ms. Montenegro contended: "They thought they were doing something Christian to baptize us and give us the chance to be better people than our parents. They thought and felt they were saving our lives."
Church officials in Argentina and at the Vatican declined to answer questions about their knowledge of or involvement in the covert adoptions.
For many years, the search for the missing children was largely futile. But that has changed in the past decade thanks to more government support, advanced forensic technology and a growing genetic data bank from years of testing. The latest adoptee to recover her real identity, Laura Reinhold Siver, brought the total number of recoveries to 105 in August.
Still, the process of accepting the truth can be long and tortuous. For years, Ms. Montenegro rejected efforts by officials and advocates to discover her true identity. From a young age, she received a "strong ideological education" from Colonel Tetzlaff, an army officer at a secret detention center.
If she picked up a flier from leftists on the street, "he would sit me down for hours to tell me what the subversives had done to Argentina," she said.
He took her along to a detention center where he spent hours discussing military operations with his fellow officers, "how they had killed people, tortured them," she said.
"I grew up thinking that in Argentina there had been a war, and that our soldiers had gone to war to guarantee the democracy," she said. "And that there were no disappeared people, that it was all a lie."
She said he did not allow her to see movies about the "dirty war," including "The Official Story," the 1985 film about an upper-middle-class couple raising a girl taken from a family that was disappeared.
In 1992, when she was 15, Colonel Tetzlaff was detained briefly on suspicion of baby stealing. Five years later, a court informed Ms. Montenegro that she was not the biological child of Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife, she said.
"I was still convinced it was all a lie," she said.
By 2000, Ms. Montenegro still believed her mission was to keep Colonel Tetzlaff out of prison. But she relented and gave a DNA sample. A judge then delivered jarring news: the test confirmed that she was the biological child of Hilda and Roque Montenegro, who had been active in the resistance. She learned that she and the Montenegros had been kidnapped when she was 13 days old.
At a restaurant over dinner, Colonel Tetzlaff confessed to Ms. Montenegro and her husband: He had headed the operation in which the Montenegros were tortured and killed, and had taken her in May 1976, when she was 4 months old.
"I can't bear to say any more," she said, choking up at the memory of the dinner.
A court convicted Colonel Tetzlaff in 2001 of illegally appropriating Ms. Montenegro. He went to prison, and Ms. Montenegro, still believing his actions during the dictatorship had been justified, visited him weekly until his death in 2003.
Slowly, she got to know her biological parents' family.
"This was a process; it wasn't one moment or one day when you erase everything and begin again," she said. "You are not a machine that can be reset and restarted."
It fell to her to tell her three sons that Colonel Tetzlaff was not the man they thought he was.
"He told them that their grandfather was a brave soldier, and I had to tell them that their grandfather was a murderer," she said.
When she testified at the trial, she used her original name, Victoria, for the first time. "It was very liberating," she said.
She says she still does not hate the Tetzlaffs. But "the heart doesn't kidnap you, it doesn't hide you, it doesn't hurt you, it doesn't lie to you all of your life," she said. "Love is something else."
Charles Newbery contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 8, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that "The Official Story" was a film about a boy who was taken from his family. The movie was about a girl.
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24) California Begins Moving Prison Inmates
By JENNIFER MEDINA
October 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/california-begins-moving-prisoners.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - Facing an unprecedented order from the Supreme Court to decrease its inmate population by 11,000 over the next three months and by 34,000 over the next two years, California prisons last week began to shift inmates to county jails and probation officers, starting what many believe will be a fundamental and far-reaching change in the nation's largest corrections system.
Last spring, the Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding and poor conditions in state prisons violated inmates' constitutional rights and, in a first, ordered a state to rapidly decrease its inmate population. Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature approved a plan that would place many more offenders in the custody of individual counties.
Under the plan, inmates who have committed nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual offenses will be released back to the county probation system rather than to state parole officers. Those newly convicted of such crimes will be sent directly to the counties, which will decide if they should go to a local jail or to an alternative community program. And newly accused defendants may wear electronic monitoring bracelets while they await trial.
"This is the largest change in the California state system in my lifetime," said Barry Krisberg, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has watched the state prisons for decades and testified in the Supreme Court case last year. "Given that what we had was completely broken and was the most expensive, overcrowded and least effective in America, there's some hope that this will change it."
The shift of prisoners to county facilities began Monday, and state officials expect to satisfy the Supreme Court's mandate by June 2013 - at which time they must have reduced the state inmate population of 144,000, which put the prisons at 180 percent capacity, to 110,000, or 135 percent of capacity. First, though, they must reach the initial court-ordered benchmark by reducing the prison population to 133,000 by December.
In what the state calls a realignment of the criminal justice system, the plan places more responsibilities on the counties, and some local officials say they are unprepared and underfinanced to get the job done. But state officials say that keeping inmates closer to their communities will increase the chances that they can be rehabilitated, rather than in and out of state prison.
For the last several years, state parole officers would often catch criminals on technical parole violations, sending them back to prison for several weeks at a time - a practice many derided as a revolving door.
The constant influx of new and former inmates also sharply increased the cost for the state, because it must pay for a medical evaluation and several other assessments every time an inmate enters the system.
Matthew Cate, the secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the state hoped that the counties would concentrate on rehabilitating prisoners and helping them reintegrate into the community, something the state system was never able to do. Figures show that nearly 70 percent of inmates in California prisons end up there again.
"The catch-and-release way we had before was not working - I don't know how anyone could disagree with that," Mr. Cate said. "The only alternative we had was just a massive release of people from prison. Nobody seemed to want to talk about that."
But some city and county officials say that the changes are likely to overwhelm local law enforcement agencies and that the state has not given them enough time or money to prepare. Last week, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and the city's police chief, Charlie Beck, said they would have to reassign 150 police officers to help monitor the former inmates.
Sheriff Scott R. Jones of Sacramento County has been one of the most outspoken critics of the plan, saying it is likely to drive up crime. He called it a "collision course with disaster," because there is not enough money for the counties.
"To do all the things that they are asking everyone to do will cost an enormous amount of money, and we don't have it," Sheriff Jones said. "If this doesn't work, it's not like we get to go back and try again - we're going to be stuck with the consequences."
Sheriff Jones said the state might have been better off simply releasing 10,000 inmates, so it could use the extra time to figure out how to get more money or create a more comprehensive system for counties. "It's not like we're ready, because we're not, and it's not like we know what is best, because we don't," he added. "The only thing that is driving this is a court demand."
But Mr. Cate dismissed the criticisms, saying the state had no other choice and had been coordinating plans for months.
"Everyone just wants to inoculate themselves from any kind of crime increase and blame it on realignment," Mr. Cate said. "This is some massive change. It's going to be subtle and happen over time."
Counties across the state have been working "feverishly" to figure out their plans to handle the new responsibilities, said Sheriff Mark Pazin of Merced County, president of the California State Sheriffs' Association.
"It's a little tiring that we're finally at the point where we have to do something and people start to react by just hitting the panic button," Sheriff Pazin said.
Studies show that reduced sentences do not cause drastic increases in crime, he said, and many counties are working on alternative programs. "We need to be concentrating on what works best and how we can actually turn things around," he said.
Sheriff Pazin said Mr. Brown had reassured him that the state would consider changing the way money is allocated to individual counties. Officials hope that five years from now, they will be able to determine which counties have been most effective at reducing the recidivism rate.
But several advocates for prisoners say they worry that the state is not doing enough to ensure that the counties will consider alternatives to jail, and several counties have said they will deal with the influx simply by adding more beds to their jails. Many of the county jails across the state are already overcrowded, and the Los Angeles County jails are being investigated by the F.B.I. over accusations of inmate abuse by deputies.
"There are no kind of guiding principles or oversight or monitoring," said Donald Specter, the director of the Prison Law Office, which argued for the prisoners in the Supreme Court case. "I think there will be extreme variations, where some counties just will use the money to lock them up with no support and others who really try to figure out real solutions."
Any violent crime committed by one of the former inmates is likely to grab headlines, but it will be years before the state can measure the impact of the change.
"We don't have a lot of options," Mr. Cate said. "The question years from now will really be: Did we avoid a disaster?"
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