Ralph Poynter updated his status: "GREETINGS FAMILY/COMRADES/SPIRIT WARRIORS- BE SURE TO PLACE OUR 'OCCUPY THE COURTS' EVENT IN YOUR CALENDAR. THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012 IS THE DATE OF THE ALL NITE VIGIL PRECEEDING THE HEARING FOR LYNNE STEWART AT 500 PEARL STREET NEW FEDERAL COURT ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 29TH IN NYC. THE ALL NITE VIGIL WILL TAKE PLACE IN TOM PAINE PARK BESIDE THE COURT HOUSE. COME WITH YOUR DRUMS - YOUR SLEEPING BAGS - YOUR BANNERS SUPPORT LYNNE STEWART, LEORNARD PELTIER, MUMIA, BRADLEY MANNING AND ALL OF OUR FREEDOM FIGHTERS UNJUSTLY INCARCERATED IN THE TORTURE CELLS OF USA INJUSTICE SYSTEM."
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MUMIA ABU-JAMAL -- EMERGENCY UPDATE -- TAKE ACTION TODAY!
Department of Corrections claims Mumia is in solitary because of his dreadlocks
Mumia and supporters renew request to close torture units in PA prisons
Visit Prison Radio to listen to Mumia's radio commentaries
http://www.prisonradio.org/
Visit HRC's websiteto learn about the reality of solitary confinement torture in PA
http://hrcoalition.org/
Read and forward this press release from the National Lawyers Guild: "After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary"
http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/after-death-row-transfer-nlg-vp-mumia-abu-jamal-languishes-in-solitary-2/
Mumia Still in Solitary Confinement - A Legal Update
From International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal:
Mumia is still in Administrative Custody (AC)-the hole-at SCI Mahanoy. The confinement conditions in all the Restricted Housing Units (RHU) are degrading and tortuous.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
http://freemumianow.blogspot.com/2012/01/mumia-still-in-solitary-confinement.html
Mumia is on a cellblock that houses AC as well as disciplinary custody inmates. He is in solitary confinement, with lights glaring 24/7, without adequate food, or the opportunity to buy food to supplement his diet. He is shackled and handcuffed whenever outside his solitary cell-including when he goes to shower. And he is isolated without regular phone calls, or access to his property, including legal materials, books and typewriter. His visiting hours are limited. In short, Mumia is being subjected to conditions in AC that are more onerous than those on death row.
There is no legal basis for Mumia to be confined in AC. At the point he was no longer under a death sentence, he should have been transferred into general population. This is not dependent on a court date for Mumia to be formally resentenced to life imprisonment.
On January 3 and January 6, 2012 I submitted demand letters on Mumia's behalf to John Wetzel, Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC), and to John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy, to immediately transfer and assign Mumia to general population with full visitation, phone and commissary privileges and access to all programs and services. The stated legal grounds are the following: The degrading, dehumanizing, tortuous conditions of Mumia Abu- Jamal's confinement in administrative custody at SCI Mahanoy are an abuse of authority, counter to DOC regulations, punitive, discriminatory, in violation of his protected liberty interests and his civil rights, including First Amendment rights.
The DOC regulations allow only two permanent categories of imprisonment, death row and general population. AC is by law only a temporary placement. It must be based on defined grounds, justified and implemented subject to procedural due process. None of the grounds listed in the DOC regulations for placement in AC apply to Mumia. In fact, on December 8, 2011 the DOC transferred Mumia from death row at SCI Greene and onto a cellblock that does not house capital inmates. On December 14, the DOC ordered Mumia moved to a medium security facility, SCI Mahanoy, which by regulation cannot hold death row prisoners.
The response by the DOC via telephone by Chief Counsel Suzanne Hueston was that Mumia is in AC pending resentencing and further evaluations. These are bogus explanations. The December 2001 federal court ruling that Mumia's death sentence is illegal has been upheld on appeal. The District Attorney has stated there will be no trial to obtain a new death sentence. Therefore Mumia should be in general population.
Nor is there a reason or basis for "further evaluation." Mumia has been confined in Pennsylvania prisons for some thirty years. The DOC unquestionably knows his history, conduct and behavior. There is nothing in Mumia's personal record to justify holding him in Administrative Custody.
The DOC's treatment of Mumia is punishment for depriving the FOP and Philadelphia District Attorney of his execution. This is the latest attempt by this frame-up system to silence Mumia, an innocent man, and to subject him to tortuous, punitive conditions in the hole.
Rachel Wolkenstein, Attorney
January 7, 2012
1) Write Call Phone and email the Secretary of Corrections
Tell them that Mumia must be immediately transferred to General Population.
John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road,
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
717) 975-4928 Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
2) Write, Call, Phone and Email the Secretary of Corrections
John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158
fax 570-783-2008
3) Write Call Phone and email the Philadelphia DA
Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000
Email: DA_Central@phila.gov
and finally if you can send Mumia a note or a card.
Write to Mumia
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
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Here's my letter:
This letter sent separately to:
Secretary of the Department of Corrections Wetzl ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
District Attorney Williams DA_Central@phila.gov
It has come to our attention that Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335, since being released from Death Row, has still not been transferred to the general population at SCI Mahanoy. His treatment is described as worse than Death Row. It has been reported to be degrading and torturous. He is being held in solitary confinement with lights glaring 24/7; he is without adequate food; he has been cut off from commissary; he remains shackled and handcuffed whenever he is taken from his cell--even in the shower; he is isolated without regular phone calls or access to his property including his legal material, books, typewriter, etc.; and his visiting rights have been drastically limited.
In short, he is being tortured under your jurisdiction. This is highly egregious; unconscionable and, criminal in the eyes of the world.
He is being punished because, through the legal manifestations of his case, the racism and injustice of the whole U.S. Criminal (IN)Justice System--the largest in the world and that dwarfs the incarceration rates of the all the other countries of the world, combined--has been exposed!
Mumia is respected and loved by millions of people across the globe. Meanwhile, Judge Sabo's words--and I mean HIS words, not mine--the phrase, "I'm 'gonna fry the nigger," has been coined by U.S. police departments around the country!
See:
Plea Deal for Officer Accused of Civil Rights Violation
The government said it intercepted and recorded a call between Officer Daragjati and a female friend in which the officer said he had "fried another nigger."
By MOSI SECRET
January 12, 2012, 2:06 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/plea-agreement-for-officer-accused-of-civil-rights-violation/?ref=nyregion
This situation is intolerable. There is no excuse for such treatment for any human being.
In fact, by rights, Mumia has served his time and should be released from prison altogether!
This we will continue to fight for.
Meanwhile, stop the torture! Release Mumia into the general prison population and restore his rights to him!
The whole world is watching what you do and we will not just "go away" or "quiet down!" Our voices will join together and resound even more loudly: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, bauaw.org
San Francisco, CA
415-824-8730
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The Voice of the ILWU
Local 21, Longview, Washington
The Longview Longshore Fight
Join the Caravan to Mass Labor Protest
DEFEND OUR UNION AND OUR JOBS!!!
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is waging a battle against union-busting. ILWU Local 21 in Longview, Washington is under attack by a giant consortium, EGT, which has built a $200 million grain terminal and is running it as a scab operation. This directly violates the port agreement with ILWU, which has had jurisdiction for over 75 years. This union-busting must be stopped. It's the fight of working people everywhere.
If EGT succeeds, other grain handlers will push for scab operations as well. That would affect the entire ILWU, as grain contracts contribute 30% to our benefits. Not only health & welfare but also our pension fund, dangerously underfunded at 64%. Breaking ILWU jurisdiction would immediately threaten our container ports. ILWU is one of the most militant unions in the country. This is a make-or-break struggle for all organized labor.
Longview Local 21 and San Francisco Local 10, Harry Bridges's local, are asking for your support. The struggle is coming to a head as EGT plans to bring in a ship to load the scab grain stored in their terminal in Longview. This could happen at any time, possibly in mid- to late-January. We are urging workers to join a caravan to go to Longview from your area when the ship comes in and to participate in a mass labor protest rally. It's your right and your duty, to your fellow union members and to yourself.
If thousands of union brothers and sisters show up, along with supporters in other unions and the Occupy movement who have aided the struggle against EGT in Longview, we can put a stop to this union-busting operation. We won't have much advance warning. So we need to prepare to come with our workmates, friends, family, with everyone who understands that our future is at stake in Longview. Get ready to be there!
It can be done. Longshore workers have done it. Last July a thousand ILWU members and supporters blocked a train carrying grain to the scab terminal. On September 7, 400 union supporters blocked a grain train in Vancouver, Washington, and then again in Longview. The next morning hundreds of longshore workers arrived from all the Northwest ports before dawn, and news media reported thousands of tons of grain ended up on the tracks. The ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Vancouver and Portland were shut down - the workers were all in Longview. Now we need you to "meet and greet" the scab ship.
The brothers and sisters in Longview are doing their part. Under a police reign of terror Local 21 with only 225 members has 220 arrests for defending ILWU jurisdiction. They have built a large and broad support campaign with rallies and mass pickets several totaling over a thousand.
Others have contributed too. On Nov. 2, Occupy Oakland mobilized 30,000 people to shut down the port to show their "commitment to solidarity with Longshore workers in their struggles against EGT in Longview, Washington." Local 21 President Dan Coffman speaking about Nov. 2 at Occupy Oakland said, "You can't believe what you people did for the inspiration of my union members..." And on Dec. 12, Occupy called to shut down the coast in support of the struggle in Longview. Again shipping in the port of Oakland was shut down, along with terminals in Seattle, Portland and elsewhere.
We're all in this together. The San Francisco and Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Councils have already declared their support. We will be signing up people who are ready to go up to Longview in a caravan when they call us. Local 21 is leading the way. Northwest locals have stepped up to the plate, as has the Occupy movement. Now it is everyone's turn. Together we have the power! Use it or lose it. Show that working people are ready, willing and able to fight for our rights.
Labor Donated, January 4, 2012
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DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!
We working people--employed, unemployed, partially employed or retired--can't get any economic justice by voting for the One Percent! We need to occupy the elections with our own candidates of, by and for working people! --Bonnie Weinstein
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Mission District's "Run on the Banks"
Noon. Saturday, January 14, 2012
16th and Mission
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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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TONIGHT!
Please forward and distribute widely:
From Oakland To Freedom! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Free Leonard Peltier!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC) Invites you to attend A Fund-Raiser for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, organized by Labor Black & Brown, and supported by the LAC
Friday, January 13th, 7 pm to 10 pm
East Side Arts Alliance,
2277 International Blvd, Oakland CA,
btwn 23rd Ave & Munson Way
DIRECTIONS: from 12th St BART in downtown Oakland,
take: bus 1R International, exit at 23rd Ave
Or: BART to Fruitvale Ave, walk to 2277 International
TICKETS: $10, sliding scale, available at location.
100 percent of all proceeds will go to the legal defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal & Leonard Peltier
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL & LEONARD PELTIER SHUT IT DOWN! FREE 'EM ALL!
Both Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier are political prisoners, framed for crimes they did not commit, and unjustly incarcerated for life. Both have been targeted for their political opposition to the US imperialist state of war, racism and exploitation. Mumia has recently gotten off of death row, only to be confined in solitary in a new prison... Scroll down for more information.
PERFORMANCES by Fly Benzo, Sogorea te Warriors, De=Colonized Rymerz, Salah Shambe, DREGSI, Eseibio The Automatic, Abdul Malik, and many more...
for more information on this event, email:
laborblackbrown@yahoo.com
Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier:
Both Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier are political prisoners, framed for crimes they did not commit, and unjustly incarcerated for life. Both have been targeted for their political opposition to the US imperialist state of war, racism and exploitation. Mumia has recently gotten off death row, only to be confined in solitary in a new prison in Pennsylvania, when he should be in general population. Meanwhile Leonard remains in federal prison despite his obvious innocence, and declining health.
Falsely convicted of killing a police officer before a blatantly racist "hanging" judge in 1982, Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence was recently overturned by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional! What took them so long?! But Mumia's conviction, though equally fraudulent, still stands, despite mountains of evidence of his innocence, most of which has never been heard in any court. Mumia's conviction was not just due to the notoriously racist police of Mayor Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia, although corrupt local cops leaped at the chance to frame him because of his criticism of police brutality as a radio journalist. His conviction was also part of a federal government plot, known as COINTELPRO, to destroy the Black Panthers and numerous other left groups.
Leonard Peltier, an activist with the American Indian Movement (AIM), was framed by the federal government, following an incident at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975, in which two federal agents were killed. At the conclusion of Peltier's trial, the prosecutor closed his argument saying, "We proved that he went down to the bodies and executed those two young men at point blank range." However, at the appellate hearing, the government attorney conceded, "We had a murder. We had numerous shooters. We do not know who specifically fired what killing shots...We do not know who shot the agents." The fact that this admission did not result in the immediate overturning of Peltier's conviction shows the complete corruption of the US criminal justice system.
Leonard Peltier was the victim of a political mobilization by FBI agents--a previously unheard of event--protesting the mere possibility that President Clinton might have pardoned Peltier on his last day in office (surprise, surprise, it didn't happen). And Mumia Abu-Jamal has been targeted by the FBI and Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) for his entire political life. The FOP still froths at the mouth for his death even after the Philadelphia DA threw in the towel on trying to reinstate Mumia's death sentence, which was due to the fact that a new sentencing hearing might have cracked the lid on the stinking can of frame-up crimes against Mumia.
While Leonard and Mumia are special targets of the capitalist state due to their unbending political opposition, hundreds of other frame-up victims and political prisoners languish in prison. Meanwhile, high-security prisons torture people in SHU's, and jails are bursting at the seams with non-violent offenders. The crimes of the "justice" system are part of the exploitative system known as capitalism, and the victimization of political activists such as Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier is part of a class war waged on the oppressed and exploited by the ruling class.
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal stands for a class-struggle counterattack. For labor action to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier! Free all class-war political prisoners! End the racist death penalty!
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
www.laboractionmumia.org
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#J15 Worldwide Candlelight Vigil for Unity 7:00 p.m. Worldwide
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday
January 15th, 2012 @ 7:00pm in Each Time Zone Globally
Jan. 9, 2012, 4:43 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/j15-worldwide-candlelight-vigil-unity/
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It's Time to "Occupy the Dream:" African-American Faith Community Joins Forces with Occupy Wall Street - First Day of Action on MLK Day, Jan 16 at Federal Reserve Banks
Members of the African-American faith community have joined forces with Occupy Wall Street to launch a new campaign for economic justice inspired by the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Faithful to its philosophical origin, the "Occupy the Dream" coalition has called for a National Day of Action on Martin Luther King Day - Monday, January 16, 2012 - when they will "Occupy the Federal Reserve," in multiple cities nationwide, focusing attention on the gross injustice visited upon the 99% by the financial elite. This will be the first of many actions leading up to a mass gathering in Washington D.C., to be held April 4 - 7, when millions will unite in celebration of the life and legacy of Dr King.
In support of this effort, StudioOccupy.org has created this inspiring video:
http://studiooccupy.org/#!/media/oici4d
The Occupy the Dream coalition was launched by a contemporary of Dr. King - Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. - and Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant of the Empowerment Temple Church, in partnership with Occupy Wall Street organizers. The following statement in support of the Occupy the Dream coalition was prepared by over 30 Occupy Wall Street organizers and read at the National Press Club in Washington, DC:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for social and economic justice with a deep moral commitment to non-violent civil disobedience. His legacy inspires many of us on the front lines of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Nearly fifty years since hundreds of thousands of people marched with Dr. King and filled the nation's capital, the dream that inspired our nation remains unfulfilled. As shocking as it is to believe, there is a more severe inequality of wealth in the United States today than there was back then. More Americans are living in poverty today than when Dr. King organized the Poor People's Campaign.
While the rich have grown richer, tens of millions of Americans have been exploited and left behind. In a time of great wealth and technological advancement, American families are desperately struggling to get by and to make ends meet.
Our political, economic, and legal systems have become wholly corrupted through a system of political bribery. Through campaign finance, lobbying, and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, our wealth has been consolidated into the hands of the few at the expense and suffering of the many.
Many of our brothers and sisters lead lives dominated by fear. Fear of losing a home. Fear of losing a job. Fear of losing medical coverage. Fear of losing the ability to provide food for our families. And for far too many, these fears have already become a reality.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is about people coming together to say "enough is enough." Our families have endured economic oppression for too long. The Occupy Wall Street movement draws its strength from people of all different walks of life, with opinions across the political spectrum, coming together to find common ground and unite against the global financial interests that have bought control of our government.
Dr. King's vision of economic justice is an edifying example of what we intend to achieve. The Occupy movement has become a powerful force by occupying communities throughout the country. The time has now come for us to embody the spirit of Dr. King and for us to "Occupy the Dream."
We are proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with the African-American Faith community in this campaign for economic fairness and justice. We are all in this fight together. We all want a healthy and secure future for our families. In the absence of a government that will defend and represent us, we are now taking it upon ourselves to stand up and defend our own families.
It is a great honor today to join with the spirit of Dr. King, to join with heroes of the civil rights movement, luminaries of the faith community, pioneers in music and all of you in attendance.
It is a great honor today to announce the birth of the "Occupy the Dream" movement.
Social Media Accounts
Twitter: @OccupyDreamOWS
Facebook: Occupy the Dream
For more information visit OccupyDream.org.
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A Call to Occupy Wall St. West!
http://www.occupywallstwest.org/wordpress/
Friday, January 20, 2012
San Francisco Financial District
DAYLONG NONVIOLENT MASS OCCUPATION
of the Wall St. banks & corporations attacking our communities, homes, education, environment, livelihood, and democracy
What?
A day of mass action centered in the SF Financial District involving mass occupation, mobilization, nonviolent direct action and disobedience.
We ask people, groups, movements and communities from San Francisco, the Bay Area and across California to self-organize and take action with us to disrupt business-as-usual either at a bank or corporation where you are drawn to act or at one initiated by other participants.
Many ways to participate without risk of arrest!
There will be an all-day orientation site at Bradley Manning/Justin Herman Plaza where unaffiliated folks can get information, including where and how to plug into actions, with mobilization times at 6:00 am (Wall St. West starts when Wall St. East starts!), 12:00 noon and 5:00 pm.
We call on the Occupy movements and the 99% across the region to join us.
Why?
To end corporate personhood! Corporations are NOT people; Money is NOT speech. January 20th is the anniversary eve of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which further privileged corporations over people in our Constitution.
To expose how Wall St. operates in our midst, attacking our communities, homes, livelihoods, education, environment, democracy, and health.
To demand that banks stop foreclosing on our neighbors and evicting them from their homes for profit.
To contribute to ongoing community fights for social and economic justice against banks and corporations.
To build and mobilize a broad-based, strategic mass movement asserting the people power of the 99% in San Francisco, the Bay Area, California and the region.
How?
DON'T GO TO OR WALK OUT OF WORK AND SCHOOL. No Business as Usual!
FORM/JOIN AN ACTION GROUP: Organize an action/affinity group with friends, neighbors, classmates, congregation and/or co-workers. We encourage you to organize an action group in your own community or with folks who share common interests or identities.
You may also meet people to form or join a group with at a Nonviolent Occupy Direct Action Training (more info later in this document) or by networking through Meetup.
These groups can take action, do education and outreach, etc. in their own communities and neighborhoods in addition to supporting mass actions and occupations and staying organized for the long haul. Please send a spokesperson from your group to the weekly Occupy SF Action Council Meeting to coordinate.
If you want to let others know that your group is participating and about the actions you are planning, we encourage you to do so!
PREPARE: Participate in a two-hour Nonviolent Occupy Direct Action Training to prepare, find out more and maybe meet up with folks to form or join an affinity group. National Lawyers Guild will sponsor Know Your Rights Trainings.
ORIENT: Go to the orientation site by the ice skating rink at Bradley Manning/Justin Herman Plaza beginning at 6:00 am and throughout the entire day for info and to plug in.
Occupy SF Action Council
The Occupy SF Action Council is an ongoing weekly "spokescouncil" meeting of affinity groups and organizations to coordinate actions and mobilizations. It is the primary coordinating body for the Occupy Wall St. West January 20, 2012, actions and lead-up activities. Decisions are made by spokespeople chosen by their groups using a modified consensus decision-making process [try for full consensus; if not possible, 9/10 majority].
All groups participating in the January 20 / Occupy Wall St. West actions, please send spokes to participate.
Sunday, January 8, 2:00pm: Unite-Here Local 2, 209 Golden Gate @ Leavenworth (just North of 7th and Market_Civic Center BART), map
Sunday, January 15, 2:00pm: Unite-Here Local 2, 209 Golden Gate @ Leavenworth (just North of 7th and Market_Civic Center BART), map
Thursay, January 19, 6:00pm: Location TBA
Check the web calendar ( www.occupywallstwest.org/calendar) for the latest information on all meetings related to the January 20 actions.
Occupy Wall St. West Workgroups
Organizing and outreach for Occupy Wall St. West (OWSW) is coordinated by the OWSW Action Workgroup and carried out by other ongoing and ad-hoc workgroups, including: Trainings, Outreach, Press, Media, Internal/Action Communications, Food and Housing.
If you have questions or would like to contribute to organizing, available contact info for each workgroup is listed on our website.
Initial Participating Organizations
Occupy SF General Assembly and Action Council
Occupy SF State University
Occupy SF Housing Coalition:
ACCE, Asian Law Caucus, Causa Justa: Just Cause, Coalition on Homelessness, Eviction Defense Collaborative, Housing Rights Committee, Occupy SF, QUEEN, San Francisco Tenants Union
Progressive Workers Alliance:
Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, Chinese Progressive Association, Filipino Community Center, La Raza Centro Legal Day Laborer Program and Women's Collective, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, People Organized to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, Pride at Work, Young Workers United
Jobs with Justice
SF Labor Council
California Nurses Association
Pride at Work/HAVOQ (Horizontal Alliance of Very Organized Queers)
Rainforest Action Network
Code Pink
ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and Racism) Coalition
28th Amendment Group
Move to Amend
SF Interfaith Allies of Occupy
SF 99% Coalition
Additional participating groups are (and can be) listed online here .
ORGANIZATIONS: Existing organizations who respect the ethos of the Occupy movement (e.g., being autonomous from political parties and organizations; non-hierarchical and directly democratic structure; and nonviolent protest, occupation and resistance) are warmly welcomed to participate.
Key Wall St. West Action Sites
We propose that the most key Wall St. institutions to target:
Are major players in the economy
Contributed to the financial crisis and economic melt-down
Have a presence in San Francisco
Have ongoing campaigns against them locally
BIG WALL ST. BANKS:
Wells Fargo World HQ (420 Montgomery) & branches
JP Morgan Chase West Coast HQ (560 Mission) & branches
Bank of America B of A Center (555 California) & branches
Citibank Citigroup Center (1 Sansome) & branches
SOME KEY WALL ST CORPORATIONS:
Goldman Sachs (555 California)
Morgan Stanley (555 California)
Merrill Lynch (101 California)
Capital International (1 Market, 20th floor)
Chartis Group (AIG) (1 Market, 36th floor)
Bechtel (50 Beale)
PG&E (77 Beale)
SOME KEY WALL ST CORPORATIONS:
Fannie Mae (50 California)
Federal Reserve Bank (101 Market)
SEC (44 Montgomery)
ACTION MAP:
Additional corporate or government sites that groups are planning actions at can be added to the online action map along with the address and information about why they are being targeted.
A printable version of the online Action Map will be available for download by January 10.
Nonviolent Occupy/Direct Action Trainings
These two-hour trainings will cover all the basics of the Jan. 20 Occupy Wall St. West Occupation, including hands-on skills and information about nonviolent direct action, disobedience and occupation for those considering participating in or supporting direct actions, or who just want to find out more. Trainings will include:
How to engage in direct action and occupation
Tools for de-escalation (and escalation)
Working in groups
Dealing with arrest and legal consequences
You may meet people at the training to form an affinity group with (a group of 5-25 who works as a team for Jan. 20) or join an existing group to participate in the day of action.
Please come on time, stay for the whole time and please RSVP using our web form.
If you have a group or community 15 or more people and would like us to have trainers come to you to do a Nonviolent Occupy/Direct Action Training, ask us and we'll make it happen if we can!
SF DIRECT ACTION TRAINING SCHEDULE
Saturday, January 14, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Sunday, January 15, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Sunday, January 15, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Monday, January 16, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Tuesday, January 17, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Wednesday, January 18, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm (2 trainings)
Thursday, January 19, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Thursday, January 19, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm (3 trainings)
Thursday, January 19, 8:30pm - 10:30pm (3 trainings)
Friday, January 20, 5:00 am - 5:00 pm all-day orientation @ Bradley Manning/Justin Herman Pl.
For locations, stay tuned to the www.occupywallstwest.org/calendar.
Legal Support
Occupy Legal is a collective of activists, lawyers and legal workers dedicated to supporting economic justice occupation encampments in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we are supporting Occupy Wall St. West.
We are asking groups to self-organize their own legal support contact person-we will work with you. More info on how to do legal support is here.
Occupy Legal works to transform the demoralizing experience of arrest and incarceration into an empowering one. We are working in collaboration with the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
What we will do:
Provide "Know Your Rights" information and trainings
Provide materials on documenting injuries and police misconduct
Staff a hotline - 415.285.1011
Organize and dispatch legal observers when needed
Track people in jail to make sure everyone gets out
Provide emergency support to people who are having a crisis in jail
Help people who are not released from jail
Find lawyers to meet with and defend arrestees on criminal charges
Organize a meeting for arrestees (if needed)
Maintain a website: http://occupylegal.info
What we can't do:
Handle bail/bond-we can't raise funds, arrange bail, or otherwise deal with money
Provide logistical support for people as they are released from jail (rides, food, medical/emotional support)
Guarantee free representation for the duration of your criminal case
We may not have resources to represent people who are being held in jail due to prior unrelated charges
Make legal decisions for you-we will give information, but in the end your actions are your own
Legal Training
The Know Your Rights training covers basic constitutional rights, interacting with the police, searches and the court/arraignment process. We use role-playing and real life scenarios to empower activists to assert their rights in protest situations and to demystify the legal process.
You can also take the official NLG Legal Observer training. If you ever wanted a sexy green hat, this is the training for you. The Legal Observer program is part of a comprehensive system of legal support designed to enable people to express their political views as fully as possible without unconstitutional disruption or interference by the police and with the fewest possible consequences from the criminal justice system.
Please contact us at occupylegal@riseup.net to RSVP or to request additional trainings for your group!
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS TRAINING
Sunday, January 15, 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm: location TBA
Housing
We will try to connect out of town participants with Bay Area housing. Please fill out aweb form if you know you are coming and you need housing OR if you live in the Bay Area and can offer housing. If you have personal contacts (e.g., friend of a friend/family, etc.), please pursue those to leave housing available to those without contacts.
Action Agreements
Agreed to by Occupy SF Action Council & General Assembly:
These basic action agreements allow for a diversity of participants from the 99% needed to build a strategic mass movement capable of standing up to and overthrowing the rule of the 1%, and building a better world. We make agreements about how we make decisions and how we occupy together; these are basic agreements about how we take action together, beyond which individuals and groups are autonomous. These are not philosophical or political requirements or judgments about the validity of some tactics over others; just minimal agreements to create a basis of trust to work together as diverse communities, and to know what to expect from each other.
Occupy SF action participants agree not to engage in property destruction, unless it's part of our strategy or action agreed to at General Assembly/Action Council (example: entering a foreclosed home to re-occupy). All groups, regardless of strategy and tactics, are welcome to participate in the day of action and are asked to agree to the general principles of the Occupy SF actions.
In forming the Occupy SF Action Council the coordinating body for Occupy Wall St West Occupy SF General Assembly and the Occupy SF Action Council agreed that: those who respect our practice of being autonomous from political parties and organizations, of being non-hierarchical and directly democratic, and of nonviolent protest, occupation and resistance are welcome. Groups that wish to co-opt, dominate or use the Occupy movement to further their own organization or ideology are not.
KEEP ON THE LOOKOUT IN LATE JANUARY OR EARLY FEBRUARY:
A Call to Action
From the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council [Longview area, Washington]
January 2, 2012
"We are imploring all able working class people willing to take time out of his or her own lives, to come to Longview, Washington for a historic protest.
.... The class struggle never really goes away. Right now the rich and the ruling class are attempting to deal a blow that labor might never recover from....
.... If you believe in a better future for the 99% of us that work for a living, do what you can to support ILWU Local 21."
The resolution that was just passed by the Labor Council in the Longview area is attached. (This is the "Call to Action" to accompany the Resolution.)
A Call to Action: It is estimated, sometime in late January or early February the [scab] EGT facility at the port of Longview will receive its first grain ship to be loaded at its berth. The name and timing of this ship will undoubtedly be kept secret until the last possible moment. It is likely there will be a few days to as little as 24 hours notice of when the ship will dock. Notification will be given via the Internet and any other relevant means of networking throughout the country.
We are imploring all able working class people willing to take time out of his or her own lives, to come to Longview, Washington for a historic protest.
This is the time for workers everywhere to take a stand. Unions and the working class standard of living that have benefited from collective bargaining for so long are in danger of being extracted completely. You can see this systematically taking place over the last 30 years or longer, and especially in recent times. Unions have lost ground over this period of time due to unjust anti-labor laws, corporate influence on the government, and complacency on the part of organized labor among other reasons.
We recognize the danger of, and view the government attack on collective bargaining of public employees as a warning shot to labor as a whole. Wisconsin was ground zero and the spark that awoke the sleeping giant that is labor. Workers are beginning to remember there is indeed strength in numbers, regardless of how many unjust laws are made to divide us.
We have not been pacified long enough, as to give up our constitutional rights or to give up all the gains our forefathers fought and died to achieve over the last hundred years. People inherently ask WHY? Why should I, or others come to the aid of the ILWU? Why should I care, and what does it matter if this ship gets loaded and they lose this struggle?
The ILWU has a proud history of being arguably the strongest labor union in the world for almost 80 years. The secret of this success lies in the bottom up, rank and file democratic structure. This empowers and involves every member. And the intelligence and foresight of the leaders who knew without unity on the entire west coast and unity with the working class, there was no strength.
EGT is attempting to break the ILWU. EGT is operating on public port property where the ILWU have worked for decades. They are in violation of their lease agreement, which states that the ILWU is to be the workforce on port property. Longshoremen have done work in port grain elevators before the ILWU was formed [in the 1930s]. If EGT succeeds, they will have essentially broken the ILWU.
First, they will set a precedent that work on public port docks is no longer automatically Longshore Jurisdiction. Then within less than a year, when the northwest grain handlers agreement is set to be negotiated, all the other grain elevators will seek to either go non-ILWU or will seek to match the eroded standard EGT creates. Shortly thereafter in 2014, the ILWU will negotiate its master contract with the Pacific Maritime Association. If they lose, you can bet the PMA will take notice and hit hard.
Most importantly to note is that grain accounts for 30% of the ILWU health and welfare package. If you lose a third of your bargaining power and your traditional jurisdiction on port property, what are you left with? Either no ILWU, or a union that would resemble nothing like what it once was. There would be little or no collective power up and down the west coast, and no way to fight for social justice or defend the working class, just as the ILWU has done for so long, in its entrenched and strategic position at the gates of international commerce.
Longshoremen have traditionally been a rough and tough bunch, but they always make sure to educate their members on the importance of history, unity and the power of collective bargaining. People nowadays forget or have not been taught their own history, they forget what it means to cross a picket line, and become a scab the rest of their life. For 30 years or more we have been sliding downhill, while some would argue unions have outlived their time. The reality is unions are the last defense when the imperfect system of checks and balances within our government fails to serve the interests of the workers.
The class struggle never really goes away. Right now the rich and the ruling class are attempting to deal a blow that labor might never recover from. The ILWU has always been the vanguard of labor everywhere. Today, the ILWU's value of "An Injury to One, Is an Injury to All" couldn't be any more pertinent for all organizations. So please, if you believe in a better future for the 99% of us that work for a living, do what you can to support ILWU Local 21.
"The most important word in the language of the working class is solidarity."- Harry Bridges
In Solidarity,
Kyle Mackey, Secretary/Treasurer Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council
ILWU Local 21 Member
Resolution of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties (Washington) Central Labor Council -
Adopted January 2, 2012
Whereas: the ILWU has always been at the forefront in the struggle for social justice and better working conditions. And,
Whereas: ILWU Local 21 has inspired working people worldwide. And,
Whereas: ILWU jurisdiction is under an unprecedented attack. And,
Whereas: It is clear to all working people that EGT is seeking to race to the bottom and destroy a long history of good family wage jobs throughout the area. And,
Whereas: The Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council, hereinafter called the council, recognize the blatant union busting tactics of EGT, as well, the danger of losing the ILWU as a powerful ally for the working class. And,
Be it Resolved: that this Council call out to friends of labor and the "99%" everywhere to come to the aid of ILWU Local 21, and to support them in any way possible in their fight against multi national conglomerate EGT. And,
Be it further Resolved: that this Council request that anyone willing to participate in a community and labor protest in Longview, Washington of the first EGT grain ship, do so when called upon by this body. And,
Finally be it Resolved: that the Council forward this resolution to all local unions, the Washington State Labor Council, Oregon Federation of Labor, California Labor Federation, the AFL-CIO, and all other relevant organizations.
Respectfully submitted,
Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties Central Labor Council Executive Board
[Note: This is the Central Labor Council for the Longview, WA area.]
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Justice for Kenneth Harding Jr.
Sunday, January 22, 2012 Noon
3rd and Oakdale:
Protest and March to Candlestick Park
Kenneth Harding JR. was murdered by the San Francisco police on July 16, 2011 for allegedly evading a two-dollar Muni train fare. Kenneth was only nineteen years old when he was gunned down and left in the street for over twenty-eight minutes where he bled out and died on 3rd and Oakdale. The Kenneth Harding Fr. Foundation is asking for the community's support in bringing the noise. We are doing a protest and march down 3rd street to Gilman and Jamestown in order to surround Candlestick Stadium during the NFC championship game. We need justice for Kenneth Harding Jr., hands off the truth tellers, and to fight back against police brutality. We will start off at Kenneth's memorial sight and disburse at the stadiums park. We want to bring awareness to all game attendees that the police in the Bay View/Hunters Point community are killing our children, violating our rights, and trying to silence people for speaking out. Come out, take a stand and help support us. We are fighting for an injustice we want to see change. Kenny may be gone but he will never be forgotten. Help honor his memory by supporting his movement.
Contact facebook.com/justice4kennethhardingjr
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LYNNE STEWART WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 HEARING AND 24-HOUR VIGIL ALERT:
Ralph Poynter updated his status: "GREETINGS FAMILY/COMRADES/SPIRIT WARRIORS- BE SURE TO PLACE OUR 'OCCUPY THE COURTS' EVENT IN YOUR CALENDAR. THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012 IS THE DATE OF THE ALL NITE VIGIL PRECEEDING THE HEARING FOR LYNNE STEWART AT 500 PEARL STREET NEW FEDERAL COURT ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 29TH IN NYC. THE ALL NITE VIGIL WILL TAKE PLACE IN TOM PAINE PARK BESIDE THE COURT HOUSE. COME WITH YOUR DRUMS - YOUR SLEEPING BAGS - YOUR BANNERS SUPPORT LYNNE STEWART, LEORNARD PELTIER, MUMIA, BRADLEY MANNING AND ALL OF OUR FREEDOM FIGHTERS UNJUSTLY INCARCERATED IN THE TORTURE CELLS OF USA INJUSTICE SYSTEM."
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#F29 - Occupy Portland National Call To Action To
Shut Down the Corporations FEBRUARY 29, 2012
by OccupyWallSt
http://occupywallst.org/article/f29-occupy-portland-national-call-action-shut-down/
via Occupy Portland & Portland Action Lab:
"Occupy Portland calls for a day of non-violent direct action to reclaim our voices and challenge our society's obsession with profit and greed by shutting down the corporations. We are rejecting a society that does not allow us control of our future. We will reclaim our ability to shape our world in a democratic, cooperative, just and sustainable direction.
We call on the Occupy Movement and everyone seeking freedom and justice to join us in this day of action.
There has been a theft by the 1% of our democratic ability to shape and form the society in which we live and our society is steered toward the destructive pursuit of consumption, profit and greed at the expense of all else.
We call on people to target corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council which is a prime example of the way corporations buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves the interests of corporations and not people. They used it to create the anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona among so many others. They use ALEC to spread these corporate laws around the country.
In doing this we begin to recreate our democracy. In doing this we begin to create a society that is organized to meet human needs and sustain life.
On February 29th, we will reclaim our future from the 1%. We will shut down the corporations and recreate our democracy.
Join us! Leap into action! Reclaim our future! Shut down the corporations!
*This action received unanimous consensus from the Portland General Assembly on Sunday January 1st, 2012."
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NATO, G8 In Chicago: More Details Released, City Grants First Protest Permit
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
January 12, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/nato-g8-in-chicago-more-d_n_1203429.html
NATIONAL CONFERENCE
United National Antiwar Coalition
Say No! To the NATO / G8 Wars & Poverty Agenda
A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% on the 99% at Home and Abroad
March 23-25, 2012 Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT (just one Metro North train stop from NYC)
On December 31, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This legislation:
1. Directs $662 billion dollars desperately needed by the 99% for housing, jobs, health care and schools towards war appropriations.
2. Slaps dangerous new sanctions on Iran.
3. Codifies indefinite detention without charges or trial on American soil.
The sanctions on Iran, which will cause severe economic hardship for the people of Iran and squeeze U.S. competitors like China who depend on Iranian oil, are just one more step toward a new U.S. war. The indefinite detention threat will be used to silence activists for social change and to ramp up Islamophobia and war fever here at home. Already, on January 1, a mosque in NYC and the homes of people of color were firebombed. Overall, the billions of dollars just appropriated are going to be used for provocative new military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
And this is just the beginning of 2012. On May 19, the U.S. will be hosting, simultaneously, the summits of the US led military coalition that has destroyed Afghanistan and Libya and threatens Syria and Iran-NATO-and the representative financial body of the rich nations-G8 - that are now imposing austerity and inequality on people everywhere.
Government leaders are preparing for expanded war and repression in 2012.
The 99% at home and around the globe will be watching to see if we are able to respond effectively.
Join us at a conference specifically designed to take up this challenge.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE
United National Antiwar Coalition
Say No! To the NATO / G8 Wars & Poverty Agenda
A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% on the 99% at Home and Abroad
March 23-25, 2012 Stamford Hilton Hotel, CT (just one Metro North train stop from NYC)
The US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 15-22, 2012 to plan their economic and military strategies for the coming period. These military, financial, and political leaders, who serve the 1 % at home and abroad, impose austerity on the 99% to expand their profits, often by drones, armies, and police.
Just as there is a nationally-coordinated attempt to curb the organized dissent of the Occupy Wall St. movements, the federal and local authorities want to deny us our constitutional rights to peacefully and legally protest within sight and sound range of the NATO/G-8 Summits. We must challenge them and bring thousands to Chicago to stand in solidarity with all those fighting US-backed austerity and war around the globe.
To plan these actions and further actions against the program of endless war of the global elite, we will meet in a large national conference March 23-25 in Stamford CT. This conference will bring together activists from the occupy movements, and the antiwar, social justice and environmental movements. We will demand that Washington Bring Our War Dollars Home Now! and use these trillions immediately for human needs.
Workshop topics include:
Occupy Wall St. & the Fight Against War; Global Economic Crisis; Climate Crisis and War; Women and War; War at Home on Black Community; War on the U.S.-Mexico Border; Islamophobia as a Tool of War; Labor; Defense of Iran and Syria; Afghanistan: Ten Years of Occupation; Is the U.S. Really Withdrawing from Iraq?; Updates on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen; What Next for the Arab Spring?; Occupation of Haiti; U.S. Intervention in Honduras, Colombia, and the rest of Latin America; No to Drone Warfare and Weapons in Space; Civil Liberties; Guantanamo, Torture and Rendition; U.S. Combat Troops Involved in New Scramble for Africa; Control of Media; Imperialism Nonviolence & Direct Action; Palestine: UN Statehood, Civil Resistance, BDS; Breaking the Siege of Gaza; Veterans Peace Team; Immigrant Rights and War; Human Rights in South Asia; Fight for Our Right to Protest; No War; No Warming; No Nukes; Philippines & the Pacific; Bring Our War $$ Home
Register now at www.unacpeace.org.
Donate to send an occupier or student to this conference!
Donate to help build the NATO/G8 permitted protest!
Send donations to: UNACpeace@gmail.com orto use a credit card, go here: https://nationalpeaceconference.org/Donate.html
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NATO/G8 protests in Chicago.
United National Antiwar Committee
UNACpeace@gmain.com or UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.UNACpeace.org
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
NATO and the G8 Represent the 1%.
In May, they will meet in Chicago. Their agenda is war on poor nations, war on the poor and working people - war on the 99%.
We are demanding the right to march on their summit, to say:
Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions, Housing and the Environment, Not War!
No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!
No to War and Austerity!
NATO's military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of 'austerity' that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.
During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many thousands of people will want to exercise their right to protest against NATO's wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society. We need permits to ensure that all who want to raise their voices will be able to march.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stonewalled repeated attempts by community organizers to meet with the city to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters' rights. They have finally agreed to meet with us, but we need support: from the Occupy movement, the anti-war movement, and all movements for justice.
Our demands are simple:
That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court- sanctioned standard for such protests -- that we be "within sight and sound" of the summits; and
That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.
The protest movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), has the support of a majority of the American people. This is because people are suffering from the economic crisis brought about by Wall Street and big banks. As the OWS movement describes it, the "99%" see extreme economic inequality, where millions are unemployed without significant help while bankers in trouble get bailed out.
In Chicago and around the country, the Occupy movement is being met with repression: hundreds have been arrested, beaten, tear gassed, spied on, and refused their right to protest.
The Chicago Police Department and the Mayor have already acknowledged that they are coming down hard on the Occupy movement here to send a message to those who would protest against NATO and the G8.
We need a response that is loud and clear: we have the right to march against the generals and the bankers. We have the right to demand an end to wars, military occupations, and attacks on working people and the poor.
How you can help:
1) Sign the petition to the City of Chicago at www.CANG8.org You can also make a contribution there.
2) Write a statement supporting the right to march and send it to us atcangate2012@gmail.com.
3) To endorse the protests, go to https://nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html or write to cangate2012@gmail.com
4) Print out and distribute copies of this statement, attached along with a list of supporters of our demands for permits.
4) And then march inChicago on May 15th and May 19th. Publicizethe protests. Join us!
Formore info: www.CANG8.org or email us at cangate2012@gmail.com
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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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NATO, G8 In Chicago: More Details Released, City Grants First Protest Permit
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
January 12, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/nato-g8-in-chicago-more-d_n_1203429.html
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Release Bradley Manning
Almost Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)
Written by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded
Locked up in a white room, underneath a glaring light
Every 5 minutes, they're asking me if I'm alright
Locked up in a white room naked as the day I was born
24 bright light, 24 all alone
What I did was show some truth to the working man
What I did was blow the whistle and the games began
Tell the truth and it will set you free
That's what they taught me as a child
But I can't be silent after all I've seen and done
24 bright light I'm almost gone, almost gone
Locked up in a white room, dying to communicate
Trying to hang in there underneath a crushing wait
Locked up in a white room I'm always facing time
24 bright light, 24 down the line
What I did was show some truth to the working man
What I did was blow the whistle and the games began
But I did my duty to my country first
That's what they taught me as a man
But I can't be silent after all I've seen and done
24 bright light I'm almost gone, almost gone
(Treat me like a human, Treat me like a man )
Read more on Nash's blog - grahamnash.com
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FREEDOM ROAD - A Tribute to Mumia sung by Renn Lee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC27vzqxSCA&feature=youtu.be
FREEDOM ROAD
(written by Samuel Légitimus- adapted in english, sung and arranged by Paris-Sydney)
They've taken all you had away
And what's left, still they can't bend
To find you guilty was their way
Yet here I am and you're my friend.
Your writing's proof enough for me, Mumia,
You place honor and law
Above all, till the end.
Thirty years gone by
On death row, we never knew
Anything of the weight
You had to carry while you grew.
But they won't get you, no, Mumia, no
We won't let them ever win
Won't let you bear such a heavy load
While walking down the Freedom Road.
(Instrumental)
Like Jimmy (1) and Bob (2) you've lived to see the light:
Believing that all men
Can stand up for their rights.
Accusing you of crime
From behind their scales they hide
It makes them scared deep down inside
To know that truth is on your side.
But they won't get you, no, Mumia, no,
We won't let them ever win
Won't let you bear such a heavy load
While walking down the Freedom Road.
(Instumental)
Those thirty years gone by
On death row, we never knew
Anything of the weight
You had to carry while you grew.
We've named a street for you, Mumia
A lovely rue in Saint-Denis
By joining hands we're showing you
Proof of our strength and peace.
But they won't get you, no, Mumia, no,
We won't let them ever win
Won't let you bear such a heavy load
While walking down the Freedom Road.X2
But they won't get you, no, Mumia, no
We won't let them ever win
Won't let them block you from getting in,
Into your home on Freedom Road.
But they won't get you no Mumia,
We will win, we'll never bend
For thirty years you've shown us all
Just how to fight until the end.
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School police increasingly arresting American students?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded
Uploaded by RTAmerica on Dec 29, 2011
A new study shows that by age 23, 41 percent of young Americans were arrested from the years 1997-2008. The survey questioned 7,000 people but didn't disclose the crimes committed. Many believe the arrests are related to the increase of police presence in schools across America. Amanda Petteruti from the Justice Policy Institute joins us to examine these numbers.
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"The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!" -- Big Bill Haywood
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1293. Big Coal Don't Like This Man At All (Original) - with Marco Acca on guitar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljtxjFKB718&mid=574
This song is a tribute to Charles Scott Howard, from Southeastern Kentucky, a tireless fighter for miners' rights, especially with regard to safety, and to his lawyer, Tony Oppegard, who sent me this newspaper article on which I based the song: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/charles-scott-howard-whistleblower-m...
The melody is partly based on a tune used by Woody Guthrie, who wrote many songs in support of working men, including miners.
My thanks to Marco Acca for his great guitar accompaniment at very short notice (less than an hour).
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=142068
To see the complete lyrics and chords please click here: http://raymondfolk.wetpaint.com/page/Big+Coal+Don%27t+Like+This+Man+At+all
You can see a playlist of my mining songs here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CF909DA14CE415DF
You can hear a playlist of my original songs (in alphabetical order) here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B9F8E3B7A8822951
For lyrics and chords of all my songs, please see my website: http://www.raymondcrooke.com
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FYI:
Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"
The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408
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Lifting the Veil
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. --HELEN KELLER
Suggested slogan for the 2012 elections:
DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!
We working people--employed, unemployed, partially employed or retired--can't get any economic justice by voting for the One Percent! We need to occupy the elections with our own candidates of, by and for working people! --Bonnie Weinstein
Keep Wall Street Occupied (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JlxbKtBkGM
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We Are the 99 Percent
We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?
OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org
wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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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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We Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY
This video begins with Professor of Education Pauline Lipman (University of Illinois-Chicago) briefly recapping the plans hatched a decade ago in Chicago to replace public schools with private charter schools. Then Chicago Public Schools head Arne Duncan implemented those plans (Renaissance 2010) so obediently that President Obama picked him to do the same thing to every school system in the country. So Chicago's growing uprising against these deepening attacks against public education has national importance. Here is a battalion of voices from the communities and the teachers union, all exposing the constantly changing, Kafkaesque rules for evaluating school turn-arounds and closings. The counter-attack from the working people in the city is energized and spreading, and is on a collision course with the 1% who want to take away their children's futures. Includes comments from Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, teachers and parents from targeted school communities. Length - 24:40
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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Documentary Footage (1963)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL2mU029PkQ&feature=fvsr
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In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at GM that began December 30, 1936:
According to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip isn't one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story," it was Roosevelt who saved the day!):
"After a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National Guard. But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were pointed at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers alone. For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress of their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' - Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58
But those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight at the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the strike was really won!
'With babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike
http://links.org.au/node/2681
--Inspiring
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Busby: Fukushima 'criminal event' calls for investigation
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Dec 27, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F0uFAWV7uc&feature=player_embedded%23!
A newly released report on the Fukushima nuclear crisis says it was down to the plant's operators being ill-prepared and not responding properly to the earthquake and tsunami disaster. A major government inquiry said some engineers abandoned the plant as the trouble started and other staff delayed reporting significant radiation leaks. Professor Christopher Busby, scientific secretary to the European Committee on Radiation Risks, says health damage after contamination will be more serious than Japan announced.
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HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g
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ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552
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ILWU Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms
Uploaded by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011
ILWU Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of Oakland called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank and file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and the interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.
For more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/
For further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be
Production of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org
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Lifting the Veil
"Our democracy is but a name...We choose between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" --Helen Keller, 1911
"It is naive to expect the initiative for reform of the state to issue from the political process that serves theinterests of political capitalism. This structure can only be reduced if citizens withdraw and direct their energies and civic commitment to finding new life forms...The old citizenship must be replaced by a fuller and wider notion of being whose politicalness will be expressed not in one or two modes of actibity--voting or protesting--but in many." --Sheldon Wolin
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/lifting-the-veil/
This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the graveyard of social movements, the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.
Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet.
Noble is brilliantly pioneering the new film-making - incisive analysis, compelling sound and footage, fearless and independent reporting, and the aggregation of the best information out there into powerful, educational and free online feature films - all on a shoestring budget.
Viewer discretion advised - Video contains images depicting the reality and horror of war.
Lifting the Veil from S DN on Vimeo.
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Frida Kahlo Diego Rivera y Trotsky Video Original
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Z0keLaGhQ
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Toronto Emergency Public Warning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iiGTGwQ9HM&feature=player_embedded
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Tom Morello Occupy LA
Uploaded by sandrineora on Dec 3, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChicrlyeKhg&feature=player_embedded
The Nightwatchman, Tom Morello, comes to lift the spirits of Occupy LA the evening after the raid on November 29, 2011.
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UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
19 November 11
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-adds-fuel-to-fire
UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded
Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded
Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded
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UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!
Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTIyE_JlJzw&feature=related
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THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o
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Occupy With Aloha -- Makana -- The Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-M07v8N_eU&feature=channel_video_title
We Are The Many -- Makana -- The Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=relmfu
We Are The Many
Lyrics and Music by Makana
Makana Music LLC (c) 2011
Download song for free here:
http://makanamusic.com/?slide=we-are-the-many
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Rafeef Ziadah - 'Shades of anger', London, 12.11.11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2vFJE93LTI
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News: Massive anti-nuclear demonstration in Fukuoka Nov. 12, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq_xKEWuj1I&feature=player_embedded
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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded
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Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0
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Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded
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Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers:
POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded
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Quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded
G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded
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WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:
Occupy Oakland Protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded
Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded
Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded
Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded
KTVU TV Video of Police violence
http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html
Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMUgPTCgwcQ&feature=player_embedded
Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded
Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded
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Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I
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Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be
Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related
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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
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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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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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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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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM
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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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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
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FREE BRADLEY MANNING
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley
I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding the Bradley Manning petition I signed:
"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning
"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.
The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the specific case raised in this petition...
"This email was sent to giobon@comcast.net
Manage Subscriptions for giobon@comcast.net
Sign Up for Updates from the White House
Unsubscribe giobon@comcast.net | Privacy Policy
Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House
"The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111"
That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about Bradley:
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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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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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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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Mumia Still in Solitary Confinement - A Legal Update
From International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal:
Mumia is still in Administrative Custody (AC)-the hole-at SCI Mahanoy. The confinement conditions in all the Restricted Housing Units (RHU) are degrading and tortuous.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
http://freemumianow.blogspot.com/2012/01/mumia-still-in-solitary-confinement.html
Mumia is on a cellblock that houses AC as well as disciplinary custody inmates. He is in solitary confinement, with lights glaring 24/7, without adequate food, or the opportunity to buy food to supplement his diet. He is shackled and handcuffed whenever outside his solitary cell-including when he goes to shower. And he is isolated without regular phone calls, or access to his property, including legal materials, books and typewriter. His visiting hours are limited. In short, Mumia is being subjected to conditions in AC that are more onerous than those on death row.
There is no legal basis for Mumia to be confined in AC. At the point he was no longer under a death sentence, he should have been transferred into general population. This is not dependent on a court date for Mumia to be formally resentenced to life imprisonment.
On January 3 and January 6, 2012 I submitted demand letters on Mumia's behalf to John Wetzel, Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC), and to John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy, to immediately transfer and assign Mumia to general population with full visitation, phone and commissary privileges and access to all programs and services. The stated legal grounds are the following: The degrading, dehumanizing, tortuous conditions of Mumia Abu- Jamal's confinement in administrative custody at SCI Mahanoy are an abuse of authority, counter to DOC regulations, punitive, discriminatory, in violation of his protected liberty interests and his civil rights, including First Amendment rights.
The DOC regulations allow only two permanent categories of imprisonment, death row and general population. AC is by law only a temporary placement. It must be based on defined grounds, justified and implemented subject to procedural due process. None of the grounds listed in the DOC regulations for placement in AC apply to Mumia. In fact, on December 8, 2011 the DOC transferred Mumia from death row at SCI Greene and onto a cellblock that does not house capital inmates. On December 14, the DOC ordered Mumia moved to a medium security facility, SCI Mahanoy, which by regulation cannot hold death row prisoners.
The response by the DOC via telephone by Chief Counsel Suzanne Hueston was that Mumia is in AC pending resentencing and further evaluations. These are bogus explanations. The December 2001 federal court ruling that Mumia's death sentence is illegal has been upheld on appeal. The District Attorney has stated there will be no trial to obtain a new death sentence. Therefore Mumia should be in general population.
Nor is there a reason or basis for "further evaluation." Mumia has been confined in Pennsylvania prisons for some thirty years. The DOC unquestionably knows his history, conduct and behavior. There is nothing in Mumia's personal record to justify holding him in Administrative Custody.
The DOC's treatment of Mumia is punishment for depriving the FOP and Philadelphia District Attorney of his execution. This is the latest attempt by this frame-up system to silence Mumia, an innocent man, and to subject him to tortuous, punitive conditions in the hole.
Rachel Wolkenstein, Attorney
January 7, 2012
1) Write Call Phone and email the Secretary of Corrections
Tell them that Mumia must be immediately transferred to General Population.
John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road,
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
717) 975-4928 Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
2) Write, Call, Phone and Email the Secretary of Corrections
John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158
fax 570-783-2008
3) Write Call Phone and email the Philadelphia DA
Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000
Email: DA_Central@phila.gov
and finally if you can send Mumia a note or a card.
Write to Mumia
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
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ACLU: SAY NO TO INDEFINITE DETENTION!
He signed it. We'll fight it.
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision.
The dangerous new law can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.
Sign the ACLU's pledge to fight worldwide indefinite detention for as long as it takes.
The Petition:
I'm outraged that the statute President Obama signed into law authorizes worldwide military detention without charge or trial. I pledge to stand with the ACLU in seeking the reversal of indefinite military detention authority for as long as it takes.
And I will support the ACLU as it actively opposes this new law in court, in Congress, and internationally.
Signed,
[your name]
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?emsrc=Nat_Appeal_AutologinEnabled&s_subsrc=120103_NDAA_GOL&pagename=120103_NDAAGOLAsk&emissue=indefinite_detention&emtype=pledge&JServSessionIdr004=d90jai6lu1.app224a
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Urgent Appeal to Occupy and All Social Justice Movements: Mobilize to Defend the Egyptian Revolution
Endorse the statement here:
http://www.defendegyptianrevolution.org/2011/12/19/defend-the-egyptian-revolution/
In recent days, protesters demanding civilian rule in Egypt have again been murdered, maimed and tortured by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Interior Security Forces (ISF).
The conspiracy, being brutally implemented in Egypt, is part of a global conspiracy to suffocate mass movements for socio-economic justice and is being done with direct assistance of the American government and the private interests which direct that government. We have word from friends in Egypt that SCAF, ISF and their hired thugs - armed by ongoing shipments of $1.3 billion in weapons from the U.S. government - plan to execute one by one all the leaders of the revolution, and as many activists as they can.
Accordingly, we need to ensure that people and organizers in the US and internationally are involved in closely monitoring the events unraveling in Egypt. By keeping track of the atrocities committed by SCAF and ISF, keeping track of those detained, tortured or targeted, and continuously contacting officials in Egypt and the US to demand accountability, cessation of the atrocities and justice, we can add pressure on SCAF, ISF and the forces they represent. In this way we may be able to play a role in helping save the lives of our Egyptian brothers and sisters.
Evidence of the conspiracy to execute the leaders and participants of Egyptian freedom movement, includes in very small part the following:
* Sheikh Emad of Al Azhar was killed by a bullet entering his right side from short range. This was seen at first hand by witnesses known to members of our coalition. Sheikh Emad was one of a small number of Azhar Imams issuing decrees in support of the revolution. His murder was no accident.
* Sally Tooma, Mona Seif, Ahdaf Soueif, and Sanaa Seif, all female friends and relatives of imprisoned blogger and activist Alaa abd El Fattah, and all known internationally for their political and/or literary work, were detained, and beaten in the Cabinet building.
* A woman protesting against General Tantawi, head of SCAF, was detained and then tortured by having the letter "T" in English carved into her scalp with knives.
* Detainees are being tortured while in courtroom holding pens. Two men (Mohammad Muhiy Hussein is one of them) were killed in those pens.These are only a small number of the horror stories we are hearing. And we continue to receive reports from Cairo about a massive army presence in Tahrir Square and the constant sound of gunshots.These are only a small number of the horror stories we are hearing. And we continue to receive reports from Cairo about a massive army presence in Tahrir Square and the constant sound of gunshots.
In every way, Egypt's fight is our fight. Just like us, Egyptians are the 99%, fighting for social, political and economic justice.
The same 1% that arms the Egyptian dictatorship commits systematic violence in this country against the Occupy movement; antiwar and solidarity activists; and Arabs, Muslims, and other communities of color.
As the US Palestinian Community Network recently observed, "the same US-made tear gas rains down on us in the streets of Oakland, Cairo and Bil`in."
Because of Egypt's key strategic location, the fate of its revolution echoes across the world. Its success will bring us all closer to achieving economic and social justice. But its defeat would be a major blow to social justice movements everywhere, including Occupy.
In short, Egypt is key to the continued success of the Arab Revolution, and movements she has inspired.
For all these reasons, we ask Occupy and all U.S. social justice activists to join us in mobilizing to defend our Egyptian brothers and sisters by immediately organizing mass convergences on Egyptian embassies, missions, consulates, and at U.S. government offices, to demand:
* Cancel all US aid and shipment of military and police materiel to Egypt!
* Stop the murders, tortures and detentions!
* Release all detainees and political prisoners!
* Immediate end to military rule in Egypt!
Please endorse and circulate this appeal widely. Please send statements with these demands to the bodies listed below. By endorsing, your organization commits to making these phone calls and following up continuously for the next week.
www.defendegyptianrevolution.org and defendegyptianrevolution@gmail.com
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Tarek Mehanna - another victim of the U.S. War to Terrorize Everyone. He was targeted because he would not spy on his Muslim community for the FBI. Under the new NDAA indefinite military detention provision, Tarek is someone who likely would never come to a trial, although an American citizen. His sentencing is on April 12. There will be an appeal. Another right we may kiss goodbye. We should not accept the verdict and continue to fight for his release, just as we do for hero Bradley Manning, and all the many others unjustly persecuted by our government until it is the war criminals on trial, prosecuted by the people, and not the other way around.
Marilyn Levin
Official defense website: http://freetarek.com/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Free Tarek
Date: Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 3:41 PM
Subject: [Tarek Mehanna Support] Today's verdict
All who have followed Tarek's trial with a belief in the possibility of justice through the court system will be shocked to learn that today the jury found him guilty on all seven counts of the indictment. In the six weeks that the prosecution used to present its case, it presented no evidence linking Tarek to an illegal action. Instead, it amassed a large and repetitive collection of videos, e-mails, translated documents, recorded telephone conversations and informant testimony aimed at demonstrating Tarek's political beliefs. The core belief under scrutiny was one that neither Tarek nor his defense team ever denied: Muslims have a right to defend their countries when invaded.
The prosecution relied upon coercion, prejudice, and ignorance to present their case; the defense relied upon truth, reason and responsibility. The government relied upon mounds of "evidence" showing that Tarek held political beliefs supporting the right to armed resistance against invading force; they mentioned Al-Qaeda and its leadership as often as possible while pointing at Tarek. It is clear they coerced Tarek's former friends and pressured them to lie, and many of them admitted to such. There is a long list of ways this trial proceeded unjustly, to which we will devote an entire post. The government's cynical calculation is that American juries, psychologically conditioned by a constant stream of propaganda in the "war on terrorism," will convict on the mere suggestion of terrorism, without regard for the law. Unfortunately, this strategy has proved successful in case after case.
Tarek's case will continue under appeal. We urge supporters to write to Tarek, stay informed, and continue supporting Tarek in his fight for justice. Sentencing will be April 12th, 2012. We will be sending out more information soon.
A beacon of hope and strength throughout this ordeal has been Tarek's strength and the amount of support he has received. Tarek has remained strong from day one, and even today he walked in with his head held high, stood unwavering as the verdict was read to him, and left the courtroom just as unbowed as ever. His body may be in prison now, but certainly this is a man whose spirit can never be caged. His strength must be an inspiration to us all, even in the face of grave circumstances. Before he left the courtroom, he turned to the crowd of supporters that was there for him, paused, and said, "Thank you, so much." We thank you too. Your support means the world to him.
You are here: Home » ACLU | "Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security" by Christopher Ott
ACLU | "Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security" by Christopher Ott
Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security
Submitted by Online Coordinator on Tue, 12/20/2011 - 14:31 First Amendment National Security
Decision today threatens writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
CONTACT:
Christopher Ott, Communications Director, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org
BOSTON - The following statement on the conviction today of Tarek Mehanna may be attributed to American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts executive director Carol Rose:
"The ACLU of Massachusetts is gravely concerned that today's verdict against Tarek Mehanna undermines the First Amendment and threatens national security.
"Under the government's theory of the case, ordinary people-including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers-could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial and unpopular ideas. If the verdict is not overturned on appeal, the First Amendment will be seriously compromised.
"The government's prosecution does not make us safer. Speech about even the most unpopular ideas serves as a safety valve for the expression of dissent while government suppression of speech only drives ideas underground, where they cannot be openly debated or refuted.
"The ACLU believes that we can remain both safe and free, and, indeed, that our safety and our freedom go hand in hand."
The ACLU of Massachusetts has condemned the use of conspiracy and material support charges where the charges are based largely on First Amendment-protected expression.
In Mr. Mehanna's case, the charges against him have been based on allegations of such activity, such as watching videos about "jihad", discussing views about suicide bombings, translating texts available on the Internet, and looking for information about the 9/11 attackers. Historically, government prosecutors have used conspiracy charges as a vehicle for the suppression of unpopular ideas, contrary to the dictates of the First Amendment and fundamental American values.
After the ACLU of Massachusetts submitted a memorandum of law in support of Mehanna's motion to dismiss the parts of the indictment against him that were based on protected expression, U.S. District Court Judge George O'Toole denied permission for the memorandum to be filed with the court. A copy of the memorandum is available here.
For more information, go to: http://aclum.org/usa_v_mehanna
via Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security | ACLU of Massachusetts.
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MUMIA HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO SCI MAHANOY!
From: info@freemumia.com
December 14, 2011
Greetings all,
Just verified with Superintendent John Kerestes that Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in Administrative Custody at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA until he is cleared to enter general population within a few days.
We need phone calls to the institution to let them know that the WORLD is watching Mumia's movements and ask general questions so that they know that nothing they are doing is happening under cover of darkness.
Please also send cards and letters to Mumia at the new address so that he begins receiving mail immediately and it is known to all of the people there that we are with him!
PHONE NUMBER: 570-773-2158
MAILING ADDRESS:
Mumia Abu-Jamal, #AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
CURRENT VISITORS on Mumia's list will allegedly be OK'd to visit once their names are entered into the computer at Frackville. NEW VISITORS will have to receive the pertinent forms directly from Mumia.
DIRECTIONS TO THE PRISON are available at http://www.cheapjailcalls.com/correctional-facility-directory/state-prison-directory/item/sci-mahanoy
PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD!!!
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HANDS OFF IRAN PETITION
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hands-off-iran/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=system&utm_campaign=Send%2Bto%2BFriend
The Petition
To President Obama and Secretary Clinton:
At no time since the Iranian people rose up against the hated U.S-installed Shah has a U.S./Israeli military attack against Iran seemed more possible. Following three decades of unrelenting hostility, the last few months have seen a steady escalation of charges, threats, sanctions and actual preparations for an attack.
We, the undersigned demand No War, No Sanctions, no Internal Interference in Iran.
(For a complete analysis of the prospects of war, click here)
http://nepajac.org/unaciran.htm
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"A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against Censorship" book
https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25
A Child's View from GazaA collection of drawings by children in the Gaza Strip, art that was censored by a museum in Oakland, California.
With a special forward by Alice Walker, this beautiful, full-color 80-page book from Pacific View Press features drawings by children like Asil, a ten-year-old girl from Rafah refugee camp, who drew a picture of herself in jail, with Arabic phrases in the spaces between the bars: "I have a right to live in peace," "I have a right to live this life," and "I have a right to play."
For international or bulk orders, please email: meca@mecaforpeace.org, or call: 510-548-0542
A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against Censorship [ISBN: 978-1-881896-35-7]
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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
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
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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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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
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WITNESS GAZA
http://www.witnessgaza.com/
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Hundreds march, rally at Fort Meade for Bradley
Courage to Resist, January 5, 2012
December 16-22, the world turned its eyes to a small courtroom on Fort Meade, MD, where accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Army PFC Bradley Manning made his first public appearance after 18 months in pre-trial confinement. The "Article 32" pre-trial hearing is normally a quick process shortly after one is arrested to determine whether and what kind of court martial is appropriate. Bradley's hearing was unusual, happening 18 months after his arrest and lasting seven days.
Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network organized two public rallies at Fort Meade to coincide with the beginning of the hearing, and there were about 50 solidarity rallies across the globe. We also sent representatives into the courtroom during all seven days of the hearing to provide minute-by-minute coverage via bradleymanning.org, Facebook, and Twitter.
"No harm in transparency: Wrap-up from the Bradley Manning pretrial hearing" includes our collection of courtroom notes
"Statement on closed hearing decisions" covers how even this hearing was far from "open"
Article and photos by John Grant
A message from Bradley and his family
"I want you to know how much Bradley and his family appreciate the continuing support of so many, especially during the recent Article 32 hearing. I visited Bradley the day after Christmas-he is doing well and his spirits are high."
-Bradley's Aunt Debra
Write to Bradley
http://bradleymanning.org/donate
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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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) Paying a Price, Long After the Crime
By ALFRED BLUMSTEIN and KIMINORI NAKAMURA
January 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/opinion/paying-a-price-long-after-the-crime.html
2) Nigerians Protest Rise in Oil Prices
By ADAM NOSSITER
January 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/world/africa/nigerians-protest-oil-price-rise-as-subsidies-end.html?ref=world
3) Charges Dropped for Some Occupy Wall Street Protesters
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/nyregion/charges-against-21-occupy-wall-street-protesters-are-dropped.html?ref=nyregion
4) Robert A. Gattis
A Case for Clemency
January 10, 2012
http://robertgattisclemency.com/
5) Give Guantánamo Back to Cuba
By JONATHAN M. HANSEN
January 10, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/give-guantanamo-back-to-cuba.html?hp
6) The Secret of Occupy Wall Street's Success
By Pham Binh
January 5, 2012
http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/2012/01/secret-of-occupy-wall-streets-success.html
7) Poverty in America likely to get worse, report finds
Indiana University study says 46 million Americans are living below the poverty line - up 27% since start of recession
By Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk
January 11, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/11/poverty-america-likely-worse-report
8) Video Said to Show Marines Urinating on Taliban Corpses
[And Bradley Manning's in jail?!?!?!? ...bw]
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
January 12, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/asia/video-said-to-show-marines-urinating-on-taliban-corpses.html?hp
9) Adversaries of Iran Said to Be Stepping Up Covert Actions
By SCOTT SHANE
January 11, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-adversaries-said-to-step-up-covert-actions.html?hp
10) Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
January 11, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/us/more-conflict-seen-between-rich-and-poor-survey-finds.html?ref=us
11) Ohio Earthquake Likely Caused by Fracking Wastewater
Injecting wastewater deep underground is the prime suspect, potentially widening earthquake worries linked to hydraulic fracturing
By Mark Fischetti
January 4, 2012
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ohio-earthquake-likely-caused-by-fracking&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20120112
12) Plea Deal for Officer Accused of Civil Rights Violation
The government said it intercepted and recorded a call between Officer Daragjati and a female friend in which the officer said he had "fried another nigger."
[The very words Judge Sabo said of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Is this a coincidence? or have Judge Sabo's remarks gone "viral" within U.S. police departments? ...bw]
By MOSI SECRET
January 12, 2012, 2:06 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/plea-agreement-for-officer-accused-of-civil-rights-violation/?ref=nyregion
13) International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
Antonio Guerrero transferred to
Marianna, Florida
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
For more information visit
www.thecuban5.org
14) Mumia in the "hole"
Demand Mumia's Immediate Transfer to General Population!
Please Post Widely
National Lawyers Guild and Human Rights Research Fund Demand Mumia's
Immediate Transfer - Read the Letter
15) NATO, G8 In Chicago: More Details Released, City Grants First Protest Permit
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
January 12, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/nato-g8-in-chicago-more-d_n_1203429.html
16) Chicago grants permits to rally, march against NATO/G8
Will Secret Service try to stop protesters?
By Staff |
January 12, 2012
Read more articles in Antiwar Movement
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2012/1/12/chicago-grants-permits-rally-march-against-natog8?utm_source=Fight%20Back!%20News%20Service&utm_campaign=50b0075f9b-UA-743468-8&utm_medium=email
17) Obama and Romney Face a Tough Fight for Key Group
"But the political landscape seems unusually fluid as the main argument of the past two years - over the national debt and the size and role of government - gives way to some degree to a related one about inequality and the nature of capitalism. For example, recent months have produced some evidence that non-college-educated white voters support the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, an indication that populist anger over the economy is more free-floating than ideologically fixed."
[We working people--employed, unemployed, partially employed or retired--can't get any economic justice by voting for the One Percent! We need to occupy the elections with our own candidates of, by and for working people! ...bw]
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
January 13, 2012, 7:10 am
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/obama-and-romney-face-a-tough-fight-for-key-group/?hp
18) Department of Corrections claims Mumia is in solitary because of his dreadlocks
Mumia and supporters renew request to close torture units in PA prisons
Visit Prison Radio to listen to Mumia's radio commentaries
http://www.prisonradio.org/
Visit HRC's websiteto learn about the reality of solitary confinement torture in PA
http://hrcoalition.org/
Read and forward this press release from the National Lawyers Guild: "After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary"
http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/after-death-row-transfer-nlg-vp-mumia-abu-jamal-languishes-in-solitary-2/
19) [CEDP] YOU can help Save Robert Gattis! Call the Delaware Board of Pardons and Paroles TODAY!
Via Email
20) Advisory: Mumia Abu-Jamal's conditions worsen dramatically after move off death row -
01/12/2012
After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary
Contact:
Nathan Tempey,
Communications Coordinator
communications@nlg.org
212-679-5100, ext. 15
New York
http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/after-death-row-transfer-nlg-vp-mumia-abu-jamal-languishes-in-solitary-2/
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1) Paying a Price, Long After the Crime
By ALFRED BLUMSTEIN and KIMINORI NAKAMURA
January 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/opinion/paying-a-price-long-after-the-crime.html
IN 2010, the Chicago Public Schools declined to hire Darrell Langdon for a job as a boiler-room engineer, because he had been convicted of possessing a half-gram of cocaine in 1985, a felony for which he received probation. It didn't matter that Mr. Langdon, a single parent of two sons, had been clean since 1988 and hadn't run into further trouble with the law. Only after The Chicago Tribune wrote about his case did the school system reverse its decision and offer him the job.
A stunning number of young people are arrested for crimes in this country, and those crimes can haunt them for the rest of their lives. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson's Crime Commission found that about half of American males could expect to be arrested for a nontraffic offense some time in their lives, mostly in their late teens and early 20s. An article just published in the journal Pediatrics shows how the arrest rate has grown - by age 23, 30 percent of Americans have been arrested, compared with 22 percent in 1967. The increase reflects in part the considerable growth in arrests for drug offenses and domestic violence.
The impact of these arrests is felt for years. The ubiquity of criminal-background checks and the efficiency of information technology in maintaining those records and making them widely available, have meant that millions of Americans - even those who served probation or parole but were never incarcerated - continue to pay a price long after the crime. In November the American Bar Association released a database identifying more than 38,000 punitive provisions that apply to people convicted of crimes, pertaining to everything from public housing to welfare assistance to occupational licenses. More than two-thirds of the states allow hiring and professional-licensing decisions to be made on the basis of an arrest alone.
Employers understandably want to protect their employees and customers from risk. Yet at the same time, there is a growing public interest in facilitating job opportunities for those who have stayed crime-free for a reasonable period of time. The weak economy and a rethinking of the logic of mass incarceration - driven in large part by budget pressures - have also brought attention to the situations of ex-offenders like Mr. Langdon, who face the collateral consequences of conviction long after their involvement with the criminal justice system has ended. Federal authorities are beginning to pay attention. Last April, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urged state attorneys general to review laws and policies "to determine whether those that impose burdens on individuals convicted of crimes without increasing public safety should be eliminated."
It is well established that the risk of recidivism drops steadily with time, but there is still the question of how long is long enough. By looking at data for more than 88,000 people who had their first arrest in New York State in 1980, and tracking their subsequent criminal histories over the next 25 years, we estimate the "redemption time" - the time it takes for an individual's likelihood of being arrested to be close to that of individuals with no criminal records - to be about 10 to 13 years. We also found that about 30 percent of the first-time offenders in 1980 were never arrested again, in New York or anywhere else.
Employers could apply their own judgments around those estimates, but the real problem is the state and local rules - often embedded in statutes - that restrict employment or licensing for the rest of the individual's life. In New York, former offenders can be forever denied licenses for certain jobs, ranging from beer distributor to real estate broker. Such "forever rules" - which fall heavily on minorities, who are particularly likely to be arrested - are inherently unfair.
We propose that the "forever rules" be replaced by rules that provide for the expiration of a criminal record. We believe it is unreasonable for someone to be hounded by a single arrest or conviction that happened more than 20 years earlier - and for many kinds of crimes, the records should be sealed even sooner. The state, as well as private employers, should face a heavy burden to demonstrate the need for any rule that imposes consequences on someone who has remained crime-free decades after a single offense. Yes, there are legitimate exceptions for high-security positions in law enforcement and national security - and there can be exemptions in particular cases; banks cannot afford to hire someone convicted of financial fraud.
A number of states have placed limits on the availability of stale criminal records. Under a law that will take effect in May, Massachusetts will limit employers' access to information about convictions to 5 years for misdemeanors and 10 years for felonies. And the new law will protect employers from due-diligence liability suits if someone they hire in accord with these restrictions commits a further offense.
Policies that encourage employers to hire people who made a mistake in the past but have since rebuilt their lives would not only help those people, but also our economy and our society. With unemployment so high, we need to make it easier, not harder, for people to find jobs. And by embracing the principle that having paid the price for crime, there should be a limit on the time they are made to suffer, we would be giving true meaning to the ideals of rehabilitation and redemption.
Alfred Blumstein is a professor of urban systems and operations research at Carnegie Mellon University. Kiminori Nakamura is an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland, College Park.
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2) Nigerians Protest Rise in Oil Prices
By ADAM NOSSITER
January 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/world/africa/nigerians-protest-oil-price-rise-as-subsidies-end.html?ref=world
DAKAR, Senegal - Tens of thousands of Nigerians took to the streets in cities across the country on Monday to protest a sudden sharp rise in oil prices after the government abruptly ended fuel subsidies. At the same time, a national strike over the oil price increase shut down much of the country.
Protesters held signs with slogans like "Remove Corruption, Not Subsidies" and burned tires in the commercial capital, Lagos, as well as in Abuja, the political capital, and in Kano, a northern metropolis. Several protesters were killed as the police sought to contain the demonstrations, according to multiple news reports.
Analysts said the size and breadth of Monday's protests were unusual, though previous attempts over two decades to end the annual subsidies, now $7 billion, have also been met with fierce resistance, and the government has always backed down.
Nigeria, one of the world's leading crude-oil exporters, is forced to import nearly all of its gasoline because the country's refineries are dysfunctional. The government pays the subsidy to middlemen, who have become extremely wealthy, so that the fuel can then be sold to the public at low rates.
Fuel doubled in price in the past week, to about $3.50 per gallon from about $1.70 per gallon, after the government announced it was ending a program that amounted to about a quarter of the national budget. In a nation where poverty is widespread and the per capita gross domestic product is only about $2,300, according to State Department figures, the increase was expected to transfer a significant financial burden onto individuals.
The public has erupted in anger over the past week, an outcry that culminated on Monday, at the termination of what people considered a rare benefit from a government chronically mired in corruption and otherwise unable to provide basic services like electricity, health care and education.
In Abuja, protesters led by labor leaders began marching as early as 8 a.m. on Monday, chanting antigovernment slogans. The police and the military set up a heavy security cordon around major government buildings. But witnesses in Lagos also described a festive atmosphere with musicians, dancing and an uncharacteristic absence of traffic in the usually frenetic city because of the strike.
The fuel subsidy is one of the few dividends average Nigerians have received from immense oil wealth that has benefited a tiny minority of the population in the country's more than 50 years of independence.
The protests coincide with a bloody revival of the insurgency by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, which has claimed responsibility for the killings of scores of Christians in northern Nigeria over the past two weeks. Analysts say the two-front challenge - oil and Islamists - poses a significant threat to the weak government of President Goodluck Jonathan, elected last spring after serving as vice president and interim president.
"Lifting the subsidy abruptly in the midst of massive government profligacy certainly is politically very provocative," said Peter M. Lewis, a Nigeria expert at Johns Hopkins University. "The Nigerian government has been burning through money at a fantastic rate. To target the subsidy seems woefully misplaced to many Nigerians."
Musikilu Mojeed contributed reporting from Abuja, Nigeria
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3) Charges Dropped for Some Occupy Wall Street Protesters
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 9, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/nyregion/charges-against-21-occupy-wall-street-protesters-are-dropped.html?ref=nyregion
Prosecutors dropped charges on Monday against nearly two dozen people picked up in the first mass arrest of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. About 50 other cases are headed to trial.
The Manhattan district attorney's office asked a judge to dismiss 21 cases stemming from a Sept. 24 march to Union Square, during which some protesters marched in the street without a permit.
Prosecutors said they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the conduct in those cases was illegal. The people had faced charges of disorderly conduct.
The march came a week after the protest began at Zuccotti Park. The about 80 arrests helped draw attention to the movement after activists posted online a video that showed a police officer using pepper spray on a group, mostly women, whom officers had corralled behind orange netting near Union Square.
The authorities said the demonstrators blocked car and foot traffic, and rebuffed orders to disperse.
Many protesters say they followed police instructions.
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4) Robert A. Gattis
A Case for Clemency
January 10, 2012
http://robertgattisclemency.com/
On January 20, 2012, the State of Delaware plans
to execute Robert Gattis for the killing of his former girlfriend, Shirley Slay. Mr. Gattis was sentenced to death in 1992. Neither the jury nor the sentencing judge had been provided with material information that, today, would be presented to any judge or jury considering whether to impose a sentence of death. Neither the jury nor the sentencing judge knew that he was the victim of ongoing sexual abuse from his pre-school years through adolescence and suffered extreme and sustained physical and psychological abuse during those same years. Experts have characterized Mr. Gattis's childhood as one "marked by catastrophic abuse and neglect." We are seeking clemency from the Delaware Board of Pardons and Governor Jack Markell. Upon recommendation from the Board of Pardons, Governor Markell has the constitutional authority to spare Mr. Gattis's life. Clemency has deep roots in our American tradition of law, to prevent undue harshness in the operation of the criminal law.
There are many compelling reasons to grant Mr. Gattis mercy and commute his death sentence to one of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, including:
• He suffered long-standing sexual molestation and physical abuse during his childhood and adolescence, which greatly impaired his ability to function as an adult.
• This history of molestation and abuse was never presented at his trial. Neither the jury that recommended the death sentence nor the judge who imposed it were aware of Mr. Gattis's tragic background. His sexual abuse was not presented at all and his extreme physical abuse was whitewashed as "spanking."
• He has consistently expressed remorse and contrition for the senseless killing of Ms. Slay.
• During his twenty-one years in prison following his death sentence, he has demonstrated a genuine and sustained commitment to rehabilitation.
• His good conduct and positive influence on younger inmates over time has been recognized and acknowledged by prison corrections officers.
• He has developed and sustained strong and enduring relationships with his two sons and their young families.
Robert Allen Gattis is a Delaware death row inmate scheduled to be executed on January 20, 2012.
His case for clemency is compelling and has inspired the support of politicians, mental health professionals, members of the clergy, judges, and lawyers in the State of Delaware. Click here
to see the prominent supporters of clemency.
To show your support for clemency for Robert Gattis, sign the online petition here.
For more information, please contact:
Robert.Gattis@gmail.com
http://robertgattisclemency.com/Petition-for-Clemency.html
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5) Give Guantánamo Back to Cuba
By JONATHAN M. HANSEN
January 10, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/give-guantanamo-back-to-cuba.html?hp
Cambridge, Mass.
IN the 10 years since the Guantánamo detention camp opened, the anguished debate over whether to shutter the facility - or make it permanent - has obscured a deeper failure that dates back more than a century and implicates all Americans: namely, our continued occupation of Guantánamo itself. It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba.
From the moment the United States government forced Cuba to lease the Guantánamo Bay naval base to us, in June 1901, the American presence there has been more than a thorn in Cuba's side. It has served to remind the world of America's long history of interventionist militarism. Few gestures would have as salutary an effect on the stultifying impasse in American-Cuban relations as handing over this coveted piece of land.
The circumstances by which the United States came to occupy Guantánamo are as troubling as its past decade of activity there. In April 1898, American forces intervened in Cuba's three-year-old struggle for independence when it was all but won, thus transforming the Cuban War of Independence into what Americans are still wont to call the Spanish-American War. American officials then excluded the Cuban Army from the armistice and denied Cuba a seat at the Paris peace conference. "There is so much natural anger and grief throughout the island," the Cuban general Máximo Gómez remarked in January 1899, after the peace treaty was signed, "that the people haven't really been able to celebrate the triumph of the end of their former rulers' power."
Curiously, the United States' declaration of war on Spain included the assurance that America did not seek "sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control" over Cuba and intended "to leave the government and control of the island to its people."
But after the war, strategic imperatives took precedence over Cuban independence. The United States wanted dominion over Cuba, along with naval bases from which to exercise it.
Enter Gen. Leonard Wood, whom President William McKinley had named military governor of Cuba, bearing provisions that became known as the Platt Amendment. Two were particularly odious: one guaranteed the United States the right to intervene at will in Cuban affairs; the other provided for the sale or lease of naval stations. Juan Gualberto Gómez, a leading delegate to the Cuban Constitutional Convention, said the amendment would render Cubans "a vassal people." Foreshadowing the Cuban Missile Crisis, he presciently warned that foreign bases on Cuban soil would only draw Cuba "into conflict not of our own making and in which we have no stake."
But it was an offer Cuba could not refuse, as Wood informed the delegates. The alternative to the amendment was continued occupation. The Cubans got the message. "There is, of course, little or no real independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment," Wood remarked to McKinley's successor, Theodore Roosevelt, in October 1901, soon after the Platt Amendment was incorporated into the Cuban Constitution. "The more sensible Cubans realize this and feel that the only consistent thing now is to seek annexation."
But with Platt in place, who needed annexation? Over the next two decades, the United States repeatedly dispatched Marines based at Guantánamo to protect its interests in Cuba and block land redistribution. Between 1900 and 1920, some 44,000 Americans flocked to Cuba, boosting capital investment on the island to just over $1 billion from roughly $80 million and prompting one journalist to remark that "little by little, the whole island is passing into the hands of American citizens."
How did this look from Cuba's perspective? Well, imagine that at the end of the American Revolution the French had decided to remain here. Imagine that the French had refused to allow Washington and his army to attend the armistice at Yorktown. Imagine that they had denied the Continental Congress a seat at the Treaty of Paris, prohibited expropriation of Tory property, occupied New York Harbor, dispatched troops to quash Shays' and other rebellions and then immigrated to the colonies in droves, snatching up the most valuable land.
Such is the context in which the United States came to occupy Guantánamo. It is a history excluded from American textbooks and neglected in the debates over terrorism, international law and the reach of executive power. But it is a history known in Cuba (where it motivated the 1959 revolution) and throughout Latin America. It explains why Guantánamo remains a glaring symbol of hypocrisy around the world. We need not even speak of the last decade.
If President Obama were to acknowledge this history and initiate the process of returning Guantánamo to Cuba, he could begin to put the mistakes of the last 10 years behind us, not to mention fulfill a campaign pledge. (Given Congressional intransigence, there might be no better way to close the detention camp than to turn over the rest of the naval base along with it.) It would rectify an age-old grievance and lay the groundwork for new relations with Cuba and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and around the globe. Finally, it would send an unmistakable message that integrity, self-scrutiny and candor are not evidence of weakness, but indispensable attributes of leadership in an ever changing world. Surely there would be no fitter way to observe today's grim anniversary than to stand up for the principles Guantánamo has undermined for over a century.
Jonathan M. Hansen, a lecturer in social studies at Harvard, is the author of "Guantánamo: An American History."
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6) The Secret of Occupy Wall Street's Success
By Pham Binh
January 5, 2012
http://socialistwebzine.blogspot.com/2012/01/secret-of-occupy-wall-streets-success.html
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has turned the world upside down and inside out.
Thanks to our efforts, the very meaning of the word occupation has been reversed. As someone who marched against the occupations of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, this has taken some getting used to.
Dick Cheney's prediction that occupiers "will be greeted as liberators" turned out to be correct, but not in the way he expected. Where ever students, workers, unemployed people, retirees, or veterans occupy they have been greeted as liberators by the 99% who feel that it is high time this country was liberated from the misrule of the 1%. The "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City" passed by the General Assembly (GA) on September 29 sums up our grievances very well and need not be repeated here.
For those of us who have been fighting for years around issues of social and economic justice, political corruption, police brutality, imperialist wars, civil liberties, and the oppression of racial and religious minorities, LGBTs, and women it seems like the country is finally beginning to catch up to us and listen to what we have been saying all along.
This raises questions: Why now? How and why did OWS succeed in galvanizing a mass movement where our previous efforts did not?
Success Requires Failure
Hardly anyone remembers the thousands of people who protested the bailouts in fall of 2008 at the doors of the New York Stock Exchange. The protests were angry but not militant nor defiant. People came, yelled, waved signs, and went home. By morning, the only sign of what took place was the occasional placard left behind and New York Police Department (NYPD) barricades stacked in neat order at the corners of Wall and Broad Streets. Meanwhile, the greatest theft in world history took place without a hitch as trillions of taxpayer dollars went directly or indirectly to financial institutions deemed "too big to fail." The protests made no difference.
Hardly anyone remembers the tens of thousands who marched from Wall Street to City Hall on May 12, 2011 against Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to lay off 6,000 teachers and close 20 firehouses. At the time, the action seemed like a weak echo of the thousands-strong occupation of Wisconsin's State Capitol building that erupted in February just as general strikes in Egypt brought down dictator Hosni Mubarak. Unlike Wisconsin, the May 12 marches were tame from the start. The union leaders long ago abandoned militant tactics in favor of making sound bite-filled speeches for a couple of hours and providing nice photo ops for their favored Democratic politicians.
Like the 2008 rallies against the bailouts, the May 12 protests were angry but not militant nor defiant. People came, yelled, waved signs, and went home. Again, the protests had no effect.
Something more was needed.
Enter New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts (NYABC), a grassroots coalition of activists from a wide variety of backgrounds: union members, socialist and anarchist groups, and community organizers. NYABC applied the occupy tactic borrowed from Egypt's Tahrir Square and the indignados in Spain by establishing a permanent encampment called Bloombergville close to City Hall to protest the mayor's proposed budget cuts. Bloombergville's name was a reference to Hoovervilles, those Great Depression-era shantytowns that thousands lived in after losing their homes, jobs, and savings as President Herbert Hoover did nothing.
Bloombergville was a dry run for OWS. The police continually harassed the encampment on dubious legal pretexts; drum circles and boisterous musicians helped create spirited, vibrant protests; there was a people's library and kitchen to provide intelletual and physical sustenance to the occupiers; and Bloombergville organized the first GA in New York City.
Despite these similarities to OWS, Bloombergville did not take off. The protesters numbered in the dozens or hundreds at most. Police harassment was largely successful and did not attract the attention of the average New Yorker. The City Council approved the budget in a 49-to-1 vote at the end of June, eliminating 2,600 teaching positions through attrition, forcing the teachers' union to make $60 million in concessions, and laying off 1,000 non-uniform city workers.
Bloombergville's one demand -- no budget cuts -- was ignored, just as the 2002-2003 anti-war movement's one demand -- no to war -- was ignored.
Prelude to Revolution
The Canadian group AdBusters' July 13 call to occupy Wall Street seemed like a great but whimsical idea: "Are you ready for a Tahrir Moment? On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months."
It was Bloombergville and the network of activists around it that gave the dream legs with over a month's worth of planning meetings. They seized on the call because there was something electric about the idea of occupying Wall Street, taking the fight against austerity, budget cuts, and rampant inequality right into the bull's lair, the nerve center of world capitalism.
Instead of attacking the symptoms of what was wrong with the status quo, like campaigning against budget cuts or fighting to win a local living wage ordinance, OWS went right to the root of the problem: Wall Street. It was radical, it was bold, and it was a far cry from the single-issue single-event organizing of Bloombergville, the May 15, 2011 union marches, the 2008 bailout protests, the 2004 Republican National Convention, the 2002-2003 anti-war rallies, the 2002 World Economic Forum protest, or any previous action by any section of New York City's progressive community.
As September 17 drew near, anticipation mounted as the hacker group Anonymous endorsed the action. It was unclear what exactly would happen that day. Would 20,000 people show up in Guy Fawkes masks (the Anonymous group's calling card)? Many local activists, jaded by years of unrewarding and difficult organizing, did not embrace OWS from the outset because their experiences taught them to be skeptical about the prospect of success.
The Uprising Begins
On day one of OWS, over 1,000 marched through the largely empty financial district that fateful Saturday afternoon, their angry chants echoing off the glass and concrete skyscrapers densely packed together by the area's narrow streets. Originally they planned to camp out at One Chase Manhattan Plaza, but Zuccotti Park was plan B since it had to be kept open 24 hours a day as part of an obscure agreement between the city and private entities that paid for the upkeep of privately owned public spaces.
Week one of OWS was relatively uneventful as working groups were formed and GAs were held to begin the process of issuing formal statements to the world. Somewhere between 100 and 200 people camped out with sleeping bags. The police waded into the park, manhandled and arrested a handful of people, and took tarps used to cover the electronic equipment OWS used to communicate with the world on the first Monday after the occupation began.
What transformed the occupation into a national uprising of the 99% was two things: unwarranted police repression and the determination of the occupiers to continue on no matter what. Not having a permit would not stop them and neither would metal fences, pepper spray, batons, or flex cuffs.
On Saturday September 24, Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed cornered women near Union Square and it was broadcast around the world from every conceivable angle thanks to camera phones and citizen uploads to YouTube. OWS's numbers swelled. Over 2,000 people marched on NYPD headquarters on Friday October 1 in protest. The next day came the famous Brooklyn Bridge incident in which the NYPD lured 700 protesters into blocking traffic, cornered them, and arrested them. The outrage triggered by the 700 arrests led 30,000 to march at a permitted union-sponsored rally on October 5, and Occupy exploded with actions in 250 towns and cities across the country, including places like Nashville, Tennesee and Mobile, Alabama.
NASCAR versus Wall Street was probably the furthest thing from the minds of the occupiers who camped out in sleeping bags during week one of OWS but it became a reality in less than a month. Occupy earned itself a capital O.
Once Occupy went national, the same two ingredients that propelled the uprising's explosive growth -- unwarranted police repression and militant, determined protesters -- led to the first general strike in Oakland, California since 1946. The strike was called in response to police hitting Iraq veteran and former Marine Scott Olsen in the face with a tear gas canister as they cleared out Oakland's occupation on the orders of Democratic Mayor Jean Quan and in consultation with federal law enforcement agencies. Occupy Oakland is now calling for another general strike up and down the West Coast on December 12 in reply to the nationwide crackdown on local occupations.
Lessons of OWS
OWS succeeded where traditional protests failed for a variety of reasons, one of the most important being the fact it was not conventional; it was not a single-issue, single-event protest, unlike almost all previous efforts by progressives in the U.S. over the last three decades. There was no end date or end game by design.
Because OWS was designed as an open-ended, ongoing event, refusing to adopt a formal set of demands was extremely wise. It allowed every person, organization, and cause to bring their own demands and shape OWS's message and avoided the pitfalls that come with making demands, namely having them ignored, ridiculed, picked apart, or co-opted by the 1% or failing to include demands important to some specific section of the 99%. People and the corporate media were both drawn to this seemingly new phenomenon of a protest without demands, an action without goals.
Many people in Occupy feel deeply and instinctively that making a formal list of demands is the first step to defeat because such a list will be used as a yardstick to judge our success or failure. All the 1% has to do is point out the fact that our demands have not been met and people will feel defeated, that marching is pointless, just as we did in 2003 when the government invaded Iraq despite our best efforts. The invasion of Iraq was a fatal blow to the anti-war movement because our central demand meant zero in the big scheme of things.
Back then, people felt defeated, demoralized, and stayed home, but they also began to learn something important: showing up, yelling, waving signs, and going home is not going to cut it. It took years of organizing around other issues and other events for that lesson to really sink in and become the strategic, tactical, and practical basis for organizing.
The important thing is not how long it took to learn this but the fact that it happened.
A second important lesson of OWS is that determined, bold, and peaceful action is more important than lists of demands, formal politics, or theoretically consistent ideas about strategy and tactics. Much of the skepticism from existing progressive organizations during the first month of OWS centered around the fact that OWS had no discernible demands, no clear strategy to win change (lobbying, strikes, boycotts, elections), and no formal leadership. All of these alleged weaknesses were actually strengths, making it all but impossible for politicians and other established or
OWS succeeded above all else because of the willingness of first hundreds, now hundreds of thousands, to act, to stand up, to fight, to protest, to speak, to Occupy. French military genius Napolean Bonaparte described his method as "first engage, and then see," and this is exactly what Occupy did.
In this respect and unknowingly OWS followed in the footsteps of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The comparison seems implausible but some of the underlying, methodological similarities are undeniable.
The Panthers developed a mass following in the 1960s not because millions of blacks read the party's 10-Point Program and clamored to sign up but because the Panthers took bold action to meet the pressing needs of their community. One of their first initiatives was to follow police patrols in California with a rifle slung over one shoulder and a law hand to police the police, to make sure the cops were following the law when they dealt with blacks. Similarly, the Panthers marched with arms on the California legislature when it began to consider repealing the law that allowed them to carry rifles in public.
"Practice is the criteria for truth," as the Panthers used to say. Their militant actions and the spirit of defiance underpinning them earned the Panthers the respect of the Black community and legions of eager followers who were literally willing to put their lives on the line to win their people freedom, justice, and equality. They were the vanguard.
Both OWS and the Panthers took bold, peaceful action and exploited legal loopholes so that when the police moved against them, the cops did so unlawfully.
The last element that led to OWS's success was changing the target from Bloomberg to Wall Street. Bloombergville did not ignite a mass movement because there was no simmering anger among New Yorkers at the mayor, who until recently enjoyed high approval ratings despite his budget cuts, his fortune, and his union-busting. On the other hand, Wall Street is about as popular as Casey Anthony, and the aftermath of the 2008 bailouts has seen more budget cuts, more layoffs, more tuition increases, more foreclosures, more unemployment for the 99% and bigger bonuses and fatter paychecks regulation for the 1%.
Targeting Wall Street instead of Bloomberg completely altered the strategic calculus of the occupy tactic, providing it with the possibility of connecting with the anger of New Yorkers and the country at large that built up for years on end with no outlet until now.
Bold action against the right target using flexible, unconventional tactics is the secret of OWS's success, but this recipe is not really a secret. Any close look at the history of movements in this country, from the underground railroad in the 1800s to the occupations of segregated in lunch counters in the 1960s, will reveal the same constituent elements.
Pham Binh's articles have been published by Occupied Wall Street Journal, The Indypendent, Asia Times Online, Znet, and Counterpunch. His other writings can be found at www.planetanarchy.net and soon thenorthstar.info, a collaborative blog by and for occupiers.
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7) Poverty in America likely to get worse, report finds
Indiana University study says 46 million Americans are living below the poverty line - up 27% since start of recession
By Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk
January 11, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/11/poverty-america-likely-worse-report
Millions of Americans will be forced into poverty in the coming years even as the US hauls itself out of the longest and deepest recession since the second world war.
A study from Indiana University, released on Wednesday, says the number of Americans living below the poverty line surged by 27% since the beginning of what it calls the "Great Recession" in 2006, driving 10 million more people into poverty.
The report warns that the numbers will continue to rise, because although the recession is technically over, its continued impact on cuts to welfare budgets and the quality of new, often poorly paid, jobs can be expected to force many more people in to poverty. It is also difficult for those already under water to get back up again.
"Poverty in America is remarkably widespread," concludes the study, At Risk: America's Poor During and After the Great Recession. "The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery."
The white paper, drafted by the university's school of public and environmental affairs, which is among the best ranked schools of its kind in the US, says that six years ago, 36.5 million Americans fell below the poverty line. By 2010, the number of people living in poverty rose to 46.2 million and continued to grow over the past year.
"The Great Recession has left behind the largest number of long-term unemployed people since records were first kept in 1948. More than 4 million Americans report that they have been unemployed for more than 12 months," said the report.
John Graham, dean of the school and one of the authors of the report, said that the numbers of "new poor" will continue to rise.
"One of the big surprises is that poverty in the United States is likely to continue to increase even as the economic recovery unfolds," said Graham. "The unique feature of the great recession is not just the high rate of unemployment, but the long duration of unemployment that millions of Americans have experienced. [For] a lot of these long-term unemployed, the job that they had won't exist when they go back in to the labour market."
Graham said that many of those who once held well-paid jobs will be forced to settle for lower paying work, trapping some in a permanent cycle of poverty.
"As a consequence they will be poor or near poor for a substantial period of time," he said.
The latest census data shows that nearly one in two of the US's 300 million citizens are now officially classified as having a low income or living in poverty. One in five families earns less than $15,000 (£9,600) a year.
The Indiana University study says that the numbers of people falling into poverty is also likely to grow because of severe cuts to state and federal welfare budgets.
"The states by their constitutions all have to have a balanced budget each year. A lot of states are already in the process of cutting back their safety net programmes at the same time that poverty is increasing," said Graham. "Their needs are going up but the programmes are receiving less support. It's going to continue because the revenues of state governments are not increasing as rapidly as is needed and the federal government will be under a lot of pressure because of its large deficit to decrease funding given to the states."
The report warns that the situation is likely to become even worse if the long-term unemployed lose their jobless benefits. Congress extended them for two months at the end of the year, but it is unlikely they will be continued indefinitely.
Among the most severely affected states are Florida, Nevada and Arizona, which have been particularly badly hit by the housing foreclosure crisis, and Michigan and Ohio, which have seen the collapse of traditional manufacturing.
Minorities are among the hardest hit. More than one in four African Americans and Hispanics is officially recorded as living in poverty. About one in 10 white Americans fall below the poverty line.
"We can expect to find that the most vulnerable parts of our society are the ones who will recover most slowly from a deep recession like this. More have gone in to poverty and they'll be slower coming out of it," said Graham. "If you look at the educational levels and skill levels of African Americans and Hispanics, they are more vulnerable as the job market tightens. They don't have either the extra edge in education or skills that white Americans do."
The report says that the situation would have been much worse had it not been for the Obama administration's 2009 federal stimulus package, which increased child health insurance for poorer families, and cut taxes for low income workers.
Still, the study says that although unemployment is officially falling, that may not be the whole story. Some workers give up looking for jobs and are no longer counted in the unemployment rate.
"Although the official rate of unemployment is declining, much of this apparent progress is attributable to the fact that many adults are giving up on the search for a job," it said.
The report argues that a better measure of how well an economy is creating employment is the "jobs-to-people ratio". It says that in a healthy economy the range is between 0.60 and 0.70. The US fell within that range until it fell to 0.582 at the end of 2009. It had risen only to 0.585 in November 2011.
"These data suggest that the reported progress in reducing the rate of unemployment may not be as encouraging as we think since increasing numbers of the unemployed may simply be giving up on the search for a job," the report said.
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8) Video Said to Show Marines Urinating on Taliban Corpses
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
January 12, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/asia/video-said-to-show-marines-urinating-on-taliban-corpses.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan - A video apparently showing four Marines urinating on three dead Taliban fighters drew condemnation from American officials, NATO authorities in Afghanistan and the Afghan government on Thursday.
"A video recently posted on a public Web site appears to show U.S. military personnel committing an inappropriate act with enemy corpses," NATO said in a statement. "This disrespectful act is inexplicable and not in keeping with the high moral standards we expect of coalition forces."
Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta said in a statement: "I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. I have ordered the Marine Corps and I.S.A.F. Commander General John Allen to immediately and fully investigate the incident." He added: "This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards or values our armed forces are sworn to uphold. Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent."
A Taliban spokesperson told Reuters that despite the shocking nature of the acts depicted, the video was unlikely to affect negotiations between the United States and the Taliban on ending the war in Afghanistan. "This is not the first time we see such brutality," said the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid. "We know that our country is occupied."
The NATO statement appeared to allude to the authenticity of the video - which was posted on public video-sharing Web sites including LiveLeak and YouTube and ricocheted around international news sites on Wednesday - but it gave no more details about where or when the video may have been made or by whom.
In a separate statement, the government of Afghanistan said it was deeply disturbed by the video and asked for a full investigation and for anyone found guilty of a crime to be severely punished.
"This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms," it said.
The video appears to show four men in Marine uniforms urinating over the three corpses, which are lying on sandy ground before them. One of the men is heard to say, "Have a great day, buddy."
If the tape is authenticated, the actions it depicts could amount to a violation of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits desecrating the bodies of those killed in war.
In 2010, a rogue group of Army soldiers killed three Afghan civilians for sport in a series of brutal crimes that rattled the military's higher ranks and angered the Afghan government. Photographs of the soldiers posing with the men surfaced last year. The soldier accused of being the ringleader of the group, which patrolled roads and small villages near Kandahar, was convicted of three counts of murder by an American military panel in November.
During the Iraq war, the Daily Mirror in Britain published photos that seemed to show British soldiers abusing and urinating on an Iraqi prisoner. The photographs emerged at roughly the same time in 2004 as the harrowing images of abuse by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. But an investigation by the British government determined that the photos were fake. The newspaper conceded that it had been the victim of a "calculated and malicious hoax" and dismissed its editor, Piers Morgan, who is now a host on CNN.
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9) Adversaries of Iran Said to Be Stepping Up Covert Actions
By SCOTT SHANE
January 11, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-adversaries-said-to-step-up-covert-actions.html?hp
WASHINGTON - As arguments flare in Israel and the United States about a possible military strike to set back Iran's nuclear program, an accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyberattacks and defections appears intended to make that debate irrelevant, according to current and former American officials and specialists on Iran.
The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on Wednesday when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran's morning rush hour.
The scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, a participant in what Western leaders believe is Iran's halting but determined progress toward a nuclear weapon. He was at least the fifth scientist with nuclear connections to be killed since 2007; a sixth scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, survived a 2010 attack and was put in charge of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.
Iranian officials immediately blamed both Israel and the United States for the latest death, which came less than two months after a suspicious explosion at an Iranian missile base that killed a top general and 16 other people. While American officials deny a role in lethal activities, the United States is believed to engage in other covert efforts against the Iranian nuclear program.
The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity. The statements by the United States appeared to reflect serious concern about the growing number of lethal attacks, which some experts believe could backfire by undercutting future negotiations and prompting Iran to redouble what the West suspects is a quest for a nuclear capacity.
"The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this," said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday's killing, "categorically" denying "any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran."
"We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community," Mrs. Clinton said.
The Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, writing on Facebook about the attack, said, "I don't know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear," Israeli news media reported.
Like the drone strikes that the Obama administration has embraced as a core tactic against Al Qaeda, the multifaceted covert campaign against Iran has appeared to offer an alternative to war. But at most it has slowed, not halted, Iran's enrichment of uranium, a potential fuel for a nuclear weapon. And some skeptics believe that it may harden Iran's resolve or set a dangerous precedent for a strategy that could be used against the United States and its allies.
Neither Israeli nor American officials will discuss the covert campaign in any detail, leaving some uncertainty about the perpetrators and their purpose. For instance, Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he believed that at least some of the murdered scientists might have been killed by the Iranian government. Some of them had shown sympathy for the Iranian opposition, he said, and not all appeared to have been high-ranking experts.
"I think there is reason to doubt the idea that all the hits have been carried out by Israel," Mr. Sadjadpour said. "It's very puzzling that Iranian nuclear scientists, whose movements are likely carefully monitored by the state, can be executed in broad daylight, sometimes in rush-hour traffic, and their culprits never found."
A more common view, however, is expressed by Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran Security Initiative at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "I often get asked when Israel might attack Iran," Mr. Clawson said. "I say, 'Two years ago.' "
Mr. Clawson said the covert campaign was far preferable to overt airstrikes by Israel or the United States on suspected Iranian nuclear sites. "Sabotage and assassination is the way to go, if you can do it," he said. "It doesn't provoke a nationalist reaction in Iran, which could strengthen the regime. And it allows Iran to climb down if it decides the cost of pursuing a nuclear weapon is too high."
A former senior Israeli security official, who would speak of the covert campaign only in general terms and on the condition of anonymity, said the uncertainty about who was responsible was useful. "It's not enough to guess," he said. "You can't prove it, so you can't retaliate. When it's very, very clear who's behind an attack, the world behaves differently."
The former Israeli official noted that Iran carried out many assassinations of enemies, mostly Iranian opposition figures, during the 1980s and 1990s, and had been recently accused of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington.
"In Arabic, there's a proverb: If you are shooting, don't complain about being shot," he said. But he portrayed the killings and bombings as part of a larger Israeli strategy to prevent all-out war.
"I think the cocktail of diplomacy, of sanctions, of covert activity might bring us something," the former official said. "I think it's the right policy while we still have time."
Israel has used assassination as a tool of statecraft since its creation in 1948, historians say, killing dozens of Palestinian and other militants and a small number of foreign scientists, military officials or people accused of being Holocaust collaborators.
But there is no exact precedent for what appears to be the current campaign against Iran, involving Israel and the United States and a broad array of methods.
The assassinations have been carried out primarily by motorcyclists who attach magnetic bombs to the victim's car, often in heavy traffic, before speeding away.
Iran's Mehr news agency said Wednesday's explosion took place on Gol Nabi Street, on Mr. Roshan's route to work, at 8:20 a.m. The news agency said the scientist, who also taught at a technical university, was deputy director of commercial affairs at the Natanz site, evidently in charge of buying equipment and materials. Two other people were wounded, and one later died in a hospital, Iranian officials said.
Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, sent a letter of protest to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, blaming "certain foreign quarters" for what he called "terrorist acts" aimed at disrupting Iran's "peaceful nuclear program, under the false assumption that diplomacy alone would not be enough for that purpose."
The ambassador's letter complained of sabotage, a possible reference to the Stuxnet computer worm, believed to be a joint American-Israeli project, that reportedly led to the destruction in 2010 of about a fifth of the centrifuges Iran uses to enrich uranium. It also said the covert campaign included "a military strike on Iran," evidently a reference to a mysterious explosion that destroyed much of an Iranian missile base on Nov. 12.
That explosion, which Iran experts say they believe was probably an Israeli effort, killed Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, who was in charge of Iran's missile program. Satellite photographs show multiple buildings at the site leveled or heavily damaged.
The C.I.A., according to current and former officials, has repeatedly tried to derail Iran's uranium enrichment program by covert means, including introducing sabotaged parts into Iran's supply chain.
In addition, the agency is believed to have encouraged some Iranian nuclear scientists to defect, an effort that came to light in 2010 when a scientist, Shahram Amiri, who had come to the United States, claimed to have been kidnapped by the C.I.A. and returned to Iran. (Press reports say he has since been arrested and tried for treason.) A former deputy defense minister, Ali-Reza Asgari, disappeared while visiting Turkey in 2006 and is widely believed to have defected, possibly to the United States.
William C. Banks, an expert on national security law at Syracuse University, said he believed that for the United States even to provide specific intelligence to Israel to help kill an Iranian scientist would violate a longstanding executive order banning assassinations. The legal rationale for drone strikes against terrorist suspects - that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies - would not apply, he said.
"Under international law, aiding and abetting would be the same as pulling the trigger," Mr. Banks said. He added, "We would be in a precarious position morally, and the entire world is watching, especially China and Russia."
Gary Sick, a specialist on Iran at Columbia, said he believed that the covert campaign, combined with sanctions, would not persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear work.
"It's important to turn around and ask how the U.S. would feel if our revenue was being cut off, our scientists were being killed and we were under cyberattack," Mr. Sick said. "Would we give in, or would we double down? I think we'd fight back, and Iran will, too."
Reporting was contributed by Steven Lee Myers from Washington, David E. Sanger from Cairo, Alan Cowell from London and Rick Gladstone from New York.
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10) Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
January 11, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/us/more-conflict-seen-between-rich-and-poor-survey-finds.html?ref=us
Conflict between rich and poor now eclipses racial strain and friction between immigrants and the native-born as the greatest source of tension in American society, according to a survey released Wednesday.
About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are "strong conflicts" between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness.
The share was the largest since 1992, and represented about a 50 percent increase from the 2009 survey, when immigration was seen as the greatest source of tension. In that survey, 47 percent of those polled said there were strong conflicts between classes.
"Income inequality is no longer just for economists," said Richard Morin, a senior editor at Pew Social & Demographic Trends, which conducted the latest survey. "It has moved off the business pages into the front page."
The survey, which polled 2,048 adults from Dec. 6 to 19, found that perception of class conflict surged the most among white people, middle-income earners and independent voters. But it also increased substantially among Republicans, to 55 percent of those polled, up from 38 percent in 2009, even as the party leadership has railed against the concept of class divisions.
The change in perception is the result of a confluence of factors, Mr. Morin said, probably including the Occupy Wall Street movement, which put the issue of undeserved wealth and fairness in American society at the top of the news throughout most of the fall.
Traditionally, class has been less a part of the American political debate than it has been in Europe. Still, the concept has long existed for ordinary Americans.
"Americans have always acknowledged that there are Rockefellers and the lunch-bucket guy," said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, based at the University of Chicago. "But they believe it is not a permanent caste, but a transitory condition. The real game-changer would be if they give up on that."
Going by the survey's results, they have not. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said the rich became wealthy "mainly because of their own hard work, ambition or education," a number unchanged since 2008.
The survey's main question - "In America, how much conflict is there between poor people and rich people?" - was based on language used by Mr. Smith's center at the University of Chicago, Mr. Morin said.
Mr. Smith said the question was often understood to mean, "Do the rich and the poor get along?" and "Do they have the same objectives?"
The issue has also become a prominent part of the political debate. President Obama has pressed the case that income inequality is rising as election season has gotten under way.
It has even crept into the Republican presidential primary race. At a debate in New Hampshire last Saturday, Rick Santorum criticized Mitt Romney for using the phrase "middle class," dismissing the words as Democratic weapons to divide society. And conservatives have been wringing their hands over Newt Gingrich's recent attacks on Mr. Romney's past in private equity, saying they are a misguided assault on free-market capitalism.
Independents, whose votes will be fought over by both parties, showed the single largest increase in perceptions of conflicts between rich and poor, up 23 percentage points, to 68 percent, compared with an 18-point rise among Democrats and a 17-point rise for Republicans. Sixty-eight percent of independents believe there are strong class conflicts, just below the 73 percent of Democrats who do. (The survey's margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for results based on the total sample.)
"The story for me was the consistency of the change," Mr. Morin said. "Everyone sees more conflict."
The demographics were surprising, experts said. While blacks were still more likely than whites to see serious conflicts between rich and poor, the share of whites who held that view increased by 22 percentage points, more than triple the increase among blacks. The share of blacks and Hispanics who held the view grew by single digits.
What is more, people at the upper middle of the income ladder were most likely to see conflict. Seventy-one percent of those who earned from $40,000 to $75,000 said there were strong conflicts between rich and poor, up from 47 percent in 2009. The lowest income bracket, less than $20,000, changed the least.
The grinding economic downturn may be contributing to the heightened perception of conflict between rich and poor, said Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
"Rich and poor aren't terribly distinct from secure and unemployed," he said.
The survey attributed the change, in part, to "underlying shifts in the distribution of wealth in American society," citing a finding by the Census Bureau that the share of wealth held by the top 10 percent of the population increased to 56 percent in 2009, from 49 percent in 2005.
"There are facts behind it," Mr. Smith said of the findings. "It's not just rhetoric."
Robert Rector, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, took issue with that, arguing that government data routinely undercounted aid to the poor and taxes taken from everyone else.
To him, the findings did not mean much, "other than that the topic has been in the press for the last two years."
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11) Ohio Earthquake Likely Caused by Fracking Wastewater
Injecting wastewater deep underground is the prime suspect, potentially widening earthquake worries linked to hydraulic fracturing
By Mark Fischetti
January 4, 2012
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ohio-earthquake-likely-caused-by-fracking&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20120112
Residents of Youngstown, Ohio, received an extra surprise on Christmas Eve and again on New Year's Eve-earthquakes, measuring 2.7 and 4.0 on the Richter scale, respectively. No one was injured and only a few cases of minor damage were reported after the Dec. 31 event.
Scientists have quickly determined that the likely cause was fracking-although not from drilling into deep shale or cracking it with pressured water and chemicals to retrieve natural gas. Rather, they suspect the disposal of wastewater from those operations, done by pumping it back down into equally deep sandstone.
Fracking is part of a nationwide boom in the production of natural gas, which is a ready replacement for home heating oil and could lessen dependence on foreign fossil fuels if vast underground shales could be hydraulically fractured. Opposition to fracking has arisen mostly out of fear that the technique could potentially contaminate drinking water supplies.
Nine small earthquakes had already occurred between March and November 2011 within an eight-kilometer radius of a wastewater injection well run by Northstar Disposal Services. Because quakes are otherwise rare in the Youngstown area, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in November asked Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) to place mobile seismographs in the vicinity to better determine what was going on. John Armbruster from LDEO installed four seismographs on November 30.
By triangulating the arrival time of shock waves at the four stations, Armbruster and his colleagues needed only a day or two to determine with 95 percent certainty that the epicenters of the two holiday quakes were within 100 meters of each other, and within 0.8 kilometer of the injection well. The team also determined that the quakes were caused by slippage along a fault at about the same depth as the injection site, almost three kilometers down.
Although LDEO scientists are not saying that the pumping caused the quakes, injection fluids have been implicated in other strike-slip earthquakes close to deep-injection wells. In essence, the fluids can act as lubricants between two abutting rock faces, helping them to suddenly slip along the boundary. The scientists did say that subsequent quakes from the Youngstown injections, which had been underway for a year, could continue to occur for up to another year, even if no more fluids are added. Ohio lawmakers have asked Northstar to stop operations until a full investigation is complete; the company has agreed but is not talking publicly about the events.
For the latest science and debates about fracking, including the unlikely chance that the practice caused a magnitude 5.6 temblor on November 14 near Oklahoma City, see our ongoing Storify file, which is updated weekly. News in New York State is picking up again because the deadline for public comments about proposed fracking rules is January 11, and regulations from the state's Department of Environmental Conservation that would allow fracking are likely to follow.
Photo of seismograph courtesy of domesticat on Flickr
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12) Plea Deal for Officer Accused of Civil Rights Violation
The government said it intercepted and recorded a call between Officer Daragjati and a female friend in which the officer said he had "fried another nigger."
[The very words Judge Sabo said of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Is this a coincidence? or have Judge Sabo's remarks gone "viral" within U.S. police departments? ...bw]
By MOSI SECRET
January 12, 2012, 2:06 pm
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/plea-agreement-for-officer-accused-of-civil-rights-violation/?ref=nyregion
A white New York City police officer who was charged with violating the civil rights of a black man on Staten Island has reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty, his lawyer said on Thursday.
The officer, Michael Daragjati, 32, is scheduled to make the plea on Jan. 24 in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
Officer Daragjati was recorded last April using a racial slur to brag about the arrest of the black man, whom prosecutors said the officer had stopped, searched, arrested without cause and falsely accused of resisting arrest.
The government said it intercepted and recorded a call between Officer Daragjati and a female friend in which the officer said he had "fried another nigger."
Officer Daragjati was also charged with making a death threat, extortion and fraud in separate episodes. His lawyer, Eric P. Franz, would not provide details about the plea agreement, but he said that race played no part in the decision to arrest the black man.
The civil rights violation, a misdemeanor, carries a sentence of up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
The extortion and fraud charges together carry a much longer maximum sentence: up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $500,000.
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13) International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
Antonio Guerrero transferred to
Marianna, Florida
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
For more information visit
www.thecuban5.org
This morning we heard from Antonio telling us that he had arrived safely after being finally transferred from Florence Colorado to the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna Florida. This is the same federal correctional institution where Rene was held until he was released in October 2011.
Antonio wanted everyone to know that he is settling in to his new situation. The struggle for Antonio's freedom and that of his four brothers must continue until their final destination back to Cuba.
New address to write to Antonio
Antonio Guerrero
Reg. No: 58741-004
Quarters: APACHE A
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O.Box 7007
Marianna, FL 32447-7007
Below is the letter we received from Antonio.
Dear Friends,
I am in the prison of my destination, where René's furtive presence of peace, respect, friendship, his dedication to study and physical exercise still lingers.
Yes, it is the medium security prison of Mariana, Florida.
A brief summary of my trip:
I left on Thursday the 5th, in the morning from Florence and headed to the airport of Pueblo. To our surprise already waiting for us was the plane from Oklahoma for the first exchange of prisoners, the ones who would stay in that zone of Colorado and those of us who would travel to the Transit Center.
We flew to California. I had never flown so far to the west. I was "close" to Gerardo, because there we picked up those who were leaving Victorville.
Then we had a direct flight of several hours returning to the center of this extensive country, that is to say, to Oklahoma. Nothing new was waiting for me there. I was on the list of the first ones who exited the plane: those of us headed to the "hole."
The authorities there had reserved for me the same cell during my last stay there. Yes, the same "solitary place" where various poems of mine were born two years ago.
This time, "the girls" who distribute the medications were no one I could recall. There was no time nor inspiration for verses. I left Oklahoma this past Tuesday the 10th.
We flew another long traverse with the destination being Jacksonville. There we were picked up by a bus that took us to the prison in Tallahassee, where we only spent a few hours "sleeping."
At 3 in the morning on the 11th, we were already getting ready to travel by highway to our final destination. It felt to me like an endless trip in a dark morning of intense rain.
We had not been able to have communication until today the 12th (it always takes 24 hours when arriving to a new prison).
Oh, I almost forgot: this time, finally, there was no "black box".
I have missed you all, although as I told you, you have accompanied me and you accompany me always.
Later, I will be telling you my first impressions here.
Five embraces.
!Venceremos!
Tony Guerrero Rodríguez
January 12, 2012
FCI Marianna
6:35 a.m.
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14) Mumia in the "hole"
Demand Mumia's Immediate Transfer to General Population!
Please Post Widely
National Lawyers Guild and Human Rights Research Fund Demand Mumia's
Immediate Transfer - Read the Letter
Call Now! Shut Down Solitary Units. Close Restricted Housing Units.
End Torture Blocks.
Demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal be transferred to General Population!
Demand the Shutdown of RHU (Restricted Housing Unit) Torture Blocks!
Since December 14, Mumia has been kept in solitary in SCI Mahanoy's
dungeon. Its restrictions and conditions belie its modern
construction. On January 6 Mumia told us that he wants all of his
supporters to broaden this call, to not just focus on his case, but to
understand that all torture units must be shut down.
The Human Rights Coalition is a group of prisoners, family members,
and supporters that have been exposing and challenging state torture
in Pennsylvania for years. HRC states "Mumia may be in solitary, but
he is not alone. The PA Department of Corrections holds approximately
2,500 people in solitary confinement on any given day, many of them
for years at a time." Please visit these websites to learn more: Human
Rights Coalition
and Solitary Watch
Please write, call, and email today! The defeat for the State,
having to openly declare that Mumia will live, and recognizing that
they can no longer legally execute Mumia, has resulted in a severe
backlash. After his transfer off of death row, Mumia was thrown in the
hole at SCI Mahanoy.
The prison administration excuse that "paperwork" is holding up his
transfer to general population in this medium security prison is
transparent. The disinformation is part of their strategy to create
confusion and disorient. Make no mistake. These conditions are clearly
designed torture. They are being enacted to silence Mumia and his
supporters.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in extremely repressive conditions.
Like thousands of prisoners, residents of solitary confinement and
isolation units in every hole in every prison across the U.S., Mumia
is being subject to draconian, dehumanizing and brutal conditions
under solitary confinement.
He is shackled whenever he is outside his cell, even to shower. He
is shackled around his ankles, waist and wrist - unable to walk
freely. He is shackled while behind Plexiglas during visits. He is
subject to strip searches before and after visits that are limited to
one hour per week. Phone call privileges have also been reduced.
He was forced to leave all personal belongings at SCI-Greene. He has
only bits of paper to write on, with a rubber flex pen. The number of
stamps and envelopes he can use is greatly limited, and his commissary
privileges have been revoked. He is also barred from having a
television, typewriter or radio in his cell, which has no electrical
outlet. Access to personal possessions such as books is also severely
limited. These conditions are worse than death row.
HOW TO TAKE ACTION:
Write, Phone, and Email the Secretary of Corrections. Demand that
Mumia be transferred to General Population! And demand the shutdown of
RHU (Restricted Housing Unit) Torture Blocks!
John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road, P.O. Box 598 Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
(717) 975-4928
Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
Write, Phone, and Email the Superintendent:
John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158 - Fax: (570) 783-2008
Write, Phone, and Email the Philadelphia DA. Demand that they
petition the court to free Mumia, based on suppression of evidence.
They have buried evidence and the truth for 30 years. The police
corruption and the frame up of Mumia must be exposed.
Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000
Email: DA_Central@phila.gov
Finally, send Mumia a note or a card:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
International Action Center
c/o Solidarity Center
55 West 17th St 5C
New York, NY 10010
1-212-633-6646
http://www.iacenter.org
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
| En Español: iac-cai@iacenter.org
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15) NATO, G8 In Chicago: More Details Released, City Grants First Protest Permit
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
January 12, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/nato-g8-in-chicago-more-d_n_1203429.html
CHICAGO -- Chicago officials said Thursday they approved the first parade permit to protesters ahead of meetings set for May of the leading industrial nations and sought to quell critics' concerns that proposed changes to city laws will step on demonstrators' First Amendment rights.
The back-to-back G-8 and NATO summits will be held in Chicago May 19-21 - the first time in more than three decades a city has hosted both meetings - and tens of thousands of protesters are expected to greet the expected 7,500 delegates from up to 80 nations. Costs for the event could reach $65 million, officials said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's challenge is to keep order and showcase the city to the world, while also allowing protesters with varying agendas to have a voice. Top aides to the mayor promised Thursday that the city would protect protesters' freedoms and even go so far as to provide plenty of portable toilets and sound amplification systems to them.
"As the city of Chicago issues permits for these events, we stand is strong support of the applicant organizations' First Amendment right to protest," Emanuel said in a statement.
At an unusual briefing for reporters held Thursday at City Hall, officials and the head of the summit host committee released more details about planning for the gatherings, which have drawn massive and unruly protests elsewhere. But much remains uncertain, including the official site of many summit events and U.S. Secret Service security perimeters.
Details such as road closures and parking restrictions may not be known until two to four weeks before the event, said Frank Benedetto of the Secret Service's Chicago field office in a statement.
The host committee and the city have estimated the summits could cost $40 million to $65 million and will be paid by donations from the private sector and federal funds, not by local taxpayers. Officials would not release fundraising goals.
The briefing came days before two Chicago City Council committees are expected to consider proposed security measures related to the NATO and G-8 summits. On Thursday, city officials said they've revised some of those proposals to respond to critics worried about infringements to First Amendment rights.
For example, they are dropping a proposal to raise the maximum fine for a violation of the parade ordinance and eliminating a requirement for parade marshals for every 100 participants. They are leaving the time of a parade at two hours and 15 minutes, instead of cutting it to two hours.
Another proposed ordinance would give the Chicago police chief the power to deputize trained law enforcement officers from other states to help with security, close public parks two hours longer than usual each day, and speed up certain procurement requirements to deal with last-minute purchasing needs.
So far, two groups have submitted four requests for permits for protest events, and Emanuel's office announced the approval of the first such permit Thursday. It went to the Coalition Against the NATO/G-8 War and Poverty Agenda, also called CANG8.
City officials said Thursday they'll approve two other permits soon, one for a rally planned by CANG8 and another for an event planned by National Nurses United, the nation's largest nurses union. A fourth permit request, also from the nurses group, will be denied because it conflicts with CANG8's Daley Plaza event, officials said, but they'll work to find the nurses an alternative site.
The Secret Service will oversee security for the summits and may designate security zones that impact the protest permits. If that happens, the mayor said, the city pledges to work with protesters to find other rally sites and protest routes.
The mayor's promise wasn't enough for activists. Protest leader Andy Thayer said Thursday the city's pledge of an alternate route if the Secret Service plans a security zone for the approved route is an unacceptable "escape clause."
"We reject the notion that the Secret Service should reject permits that have already been approved," Thayer said in a statement.
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16) Chicago grants permits to rally, march against NATO/G8
Will Secret Service try to stop protesters?
By Staff |
January 12, 2012
Read more articles in Antiwar Movement
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2012/1/12/chicago-grants-permits-rally-march-against-natog8?utm_source=Fight%20Back!%20News%20Service&utm_campaign=50b0075f9b-UA-743468-8&utm_medium=email
Chicago IL - In a surprise move Jan. 12, the City of Chicago granted permits to the Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANG8) for a rally and march on May 19. CANG8 is mobilizing against the summits of NATO and the G8 occurring in Chicago that weekend.
"Mayor Emanuel responded to public opinion, which clearly supported our right to protest against NATO's wars and the poverty that the G8 is pushing onto working people through their cutbacks," said Joe Iosbaker of CANG8. "It's the only explanation that makes sense."
The coalition had been building broad support for their demands for permits since June, 2011 when President Obama announced the summits of bankers, generals and heads of state of the wealthiest nations. CANG8 is planning a family-friendly demonstration to take their message to within sight and sound of the McCormick Place where the summits are scheduled.
Given with one hand, taken with the other?
However, the cover letters from the city that accompanied the permits threaten that they might be revoked. The cover letters state that Secret Service could "designate specific security zones or areas."
This threat is very real. For months, the Chicago Police Department and Secret Service have been issuing "security assessments" to downtown schools, churches, businesses and cultural institutions saying that the protestors are so violent that everyone should leave the area during the events.
When anti-war activists first submitted an application for the Daley Plaza, it was denied with a memo that no permits would be granted for public assembly during the period of the summits. A public pressure campaign mounted by CANG8 compelled the city to backtrack on that as well.
Both of these reveal that the joint city-federal agency overseeing the summits want to stop protests from reaching the eyes and ears of the rich and powerful who will be at McCormick Place in May.
In response to the threat of a denial, Iosbaker responded, "The Secret Service should not try to take away what the city of Chicago has finally granted."
Resistance to Emanuel's Threatened Restrictions on Protests
The granting of the permits is set against a backdrop of growing opposition to the repressive moves of the mayor. Mayor Emanuel is demanding changes to city ordinances to make protests harder to organize and to threaten anyone who speaks up with enormous fines and police repression. He proposed these changes in mid-December and declared he wanted the city council to adopt them at their next possible meeting.
At first, the city council leaders lined up to say "yes" to the mayor, but a pressure campaign that drew in Occupy Chicago, SEIU, the Teachers Union and civil liberties advocates forced the politicians to reverse themselves. On Jan. 12, the mayor's office was also met with a rebellion by alderpersons who, for the first time, have said "no" to Emanuel.
In describing how the granting of permits impacted on the debate in the city council, CANG8 activist Andy Thayer noted, "The issuance of this permit shows that the current ordinances, while not perfect, are more than adequate for large public events in our city, and that the mayor should rescind his proposed anti-protester ordinances."
The city council is scheduled to vote on Emanuel's ordinance changes at its meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 18. Two committees of the city council are scheduled to discuss the changes on Jan. 17. CANG8 is calling for a national call in day to demand Emanuel stop his efforts to deny the right to protest.
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17) Obama and Romney Face a Tough Fight for Key Group
"But the political landscape seems unusually fluid as the main argument of the past two years - over the national debt and the size and role of government - gives way to some degree to a related one about inequality and the nature of capitalism. For example, recent months have produced some evidence that non-college-educated white voters support the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, an indication that populist anger over the economy is more free-floating than ideologically fixed."
[We working people--employed, unemployed, partially employed or retired--can't get any economic justice by voting for the One Percent! We need to occupy the elections with our own candidates of, by and for working people! ...bw]
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
January 13, 2012, 7:10 am
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/obama-and-romney-face-a-tough-fight-for-key-group/?hp
Both are Harvard-educated millionaires. Both have been criticized as elitist and technocratic. Both have struggled to handle the populist anger coursing through politics.
On Politics
On Politics
The Times's political editor on 2012.
In an election climate largely defined by the anxieties of the middle class, working people are now more likely than not to face a choice in November between two candidates who sometimes seem to have trouble relating to them. One is President Obama, who once characterized them as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion." The other is Mitt Romney, currently defending himself against allegations from within his own party that he is a "vulture" capitalist and who in the last week has suggested that he takes pleasure in firing those who fail to provide good service and that politics might best be practiced by those who have paid off their mortgages.
This may be a grassroots year, but neither one of these candidates is mowing his own lawn. And neither one, analysts say, is likely to have an easy time winning the allegiance of a group that is critical to their electoral prospects: white working-class voters.
There is more to the candidacies and backgrounds of the two men, of course, than the shorthand descriptions of their wealth and personalities. Mr. Obama grew up as the son of a single mother and worked as a community organizer in inner city Chicago. Mr. Romney's emphasis on getting tough with China is winning him attention from workers, and former workers, in industries turned upside down by global competition.
But they face substantial challenges based on the perception that they are out of touch with the values and needs of the kinds of voters who have been most affected by economic and cultural upheaval.
For most of the past decade, blue-collar, white voters have been overwhelmingly in the Republican column. Mr. Obama did much better among them in 2008 than the previous two Democratic presidential candidates had done. But in the 2010 midterm elections, they flocked back to the Republicans.
This time around, they will be swing voters of a sort. This is not because Mr. Obama has a great chance at this point of winning them over again - polling suggests no big shift so far from 2010 - but because it will be essential to him to hold down the Republican margin of victory within the group. Equally, it would be vital to Mr. Romney, assuming he becomes the nominee, to run up the score.
A study released in November by Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, the liberal research group, took a comprehensive look at the demographics and geography of the 2012 race. It concluded that Mr. Obama has to repeat his strong 2008 performance among white college graduates if he is to survive a drop in his share of white working-class voters this year to the level the Democratic Party won in 2010.
"Conversely, if Republicans can cut significantly into Obama's white college-graduate support and then replicate the landslide margins they achieved among white working-class voters in 2010," the study said, "then they are likely to emerge victorious."
If white working-class voters are defined as those of all ages with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 and no college education, Senator John McCain won them in 2008 by a 52-46 margin, according to national exit polls. It was one of the few groups with which he did well against Mr. Obama, but the result was nonetheless a steep falloff for Republicans from 2004, when President George W. Bush took the same group by a 67-32 margin against Senator John Kerry.
But in the Tea Party-fueled backlash election of 2010, white working-class voters went Republican by roughly a 30-point margin, according to exit polls.
Even before Mr. Romney emerged as the favorite to win the Republican nomination, there was a debate underway over whether Mr. Obama should focus his electoral strategy on friendlier and faster-growing demographic groups, like Hispanics and professionals with high levels of education, and chart an electoral course through states like Colorado and Virginia with large proportions of those types of voters rather than through Rust Belt states heavy with less educated, working-class voters.
But the political landscape seems unusually fluid as the main argument of the past two years - over the national debt and the size and role of government - gives way to some degree to a related one about inequality and the nature of capitalism. For example, recent months have produced some evidence that non-college-educated white voters support the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, an indication that populist anger over the economy is more free-floating than ideologically fixed.
Now the effort by some of his fellow Republicans to portray Mr. Romney as a job killer during his time at Bain has opened new opportunities for the Obama team to make inroads among working-class voters, some strategists say. Mr. Romney may not have helped his case, they said, with comments like his recent statement that he knows the fear of being laid off, despite being hired as a management consultant right after receiving law and business degrees from Harvard and going on quickly to make millions managing private equity deals.
It is too soon to know if Mr. Romney's vulnerabilities translate into opportunities for Mr. Obama, said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, which does extensive public opinion surveys and identifies one of the key groups of working-class people as "disaffecteds" - Republican-leaning independents who are economically pessimistic and socially conservative.
"But it at least gives them something to talk about and a place to start," Mr. Kohut said, referring to the Obama campaign's opportunity to raise Mr. Romney's record with working-class voters.
The fight for the white working class will revolve around constraints imposed on both sides, said David "Mudcat" Saunders, a veteran operative who counsels Democrats on appealing to rural and working-class voters.
Mr. Obama will suffer from a steep loss of enthusiasm for him among these voters since the 2008 election and the economic downturn, he said. Mr. Romney, a Mormon from a liberal state with a history of shifting positions, will have trouble invoking the cultural issues that Republicans have always relied on to rally voters.
"The old wedges of God, guns and gays aren't going to work this time around, and that plays obviously to the benefit of Barack Obama," he said.
"There's only one way that Obama can regain momentum among white working-class people, and only one way Mitt Romney can do it, and that's using economic populism," he said. "You're seeing signs of both of them doing so."
He said Mr. Romney's call for tougher sanctions on China is particularly resonant among working-class people who have seen jobs devoured by foreign competitors. "China is the wedge issue that Republicans can use," he said.
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18) Department of Corrections claims Mumia is in solitary because of his dreadlocks
Mumia and supporters renew request to close torture units in PA prisons
Visit Prison Radio to listen to Mumia's radio commentaries
http://www.prisonradio.org/
Visit HRC's websiteto learn about the reality of solitary confinement torture in PA
http://hrcoalition.org/
Read and forward this press release from the National Lawyers Guild: "After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary"
http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/after-death-row-transfer-nlg-vp-mumia-abu-jamal-languishes-in-solitary-2/
In a statement issued late Thursday, January 12, an attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal reported that he has been given a new reason for his continued solitary confinement - his long dreadlocks.
Prison authorities at SCI Mahanoy claim Abu-Jamal will be held in the Restricted Housing Unit on disciplinary custody until he cuts his hair. This is an old tactic that was used against Mumia when he was a death row prisoner. He spent 8 years on disciplinary status in death row until he was removed from that status--without getting a haircut--in the early 1990s.
It has taken prison officials five weeks to invent this new pretext for continuing the 30-year-long solitary confinement torture of Abu-Jamal. Mumia and his supporters are calling for his immediate release to general population and the shut down of all of the solitary units in PA.
Sign a petition to transfer Mumia out of the hole.
http://prisonradio.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/sign-on-petition-to-transfer-mumia-out-of-the-hole/
Read and forward this press release from the National Lawyers Guild: "After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary"
http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/after-death-row-transfer-nlg-vp-mumia-abu-jamal-languishes-in-solitary-2/
Contact Department of Corrections officials and let them know you are not fooled and will not tolerate efforts to silence and torture Mumia:
1) Write, Phone, and email the Secretary of Corrections: Demand that Mumia be transferred to General Population! And demand the shutdown of RHU (Restricted Housing Unit) Torture Blocks!
John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road, P.O. Box 598, Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598 (717) 975-4928 Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
2) Write, Phone, and email the Superintendent:
John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158 Fax: (570) 783-2008
3) Write, Phone, and email the Philadelphia DA. Demand that they petition the court to free Mumia, based on suppression of evidence. They have buried evidence and the truth for 30 years. The police corruption and the frame up of
Mumia must be exposed.
Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000 Email: DA_Central@phila.gov
and finally, send Mumia a note or a card:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
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19) [CEDP] YOU can help Save Robert Gattis! Call the Delaware Board of Pardons and Paroles TODAY!
Via Email
Dear abolitionists,
We are still waiting on pins and needles for the Delaware's Board of Pardons and Paroles decision about Robert Gattis. On Monday, the Board of Pardons and Paroles held a hearing for Robert to consider testimony regarding commuting his death sentence to life in prison. If they deny his clemency, Robert will be executed a week from today barring the unlikely event that a higher court intervenes. It is strange that the Board has taken this long to rule, but we want to make sure they know what we know: Robert Gattis does not deserve to die!
Robert suffered long-standing sexual molestation and physical abuse during his childhood and adolescence, which greatly impaired his ability to function as an adult. During his years in prison, he has worked to overcome the abuse of his childhood and has reached out to help others with the challenges they face. Robert is extremely remorseful for his actions and has worked hard to redeem himself over the last two decades by helping his family and many others through relationships that mirror his own early years. To take Robert's life now, 20 years later, would only lead to another tragedy, for another family, leading another set of murder victims to be established.
Please call the Delaware Board of Pardons and Paroles (302.739.4111) today and ask that Robert's sentence be commuted. You can e-mail them at: Pardons@state.de.us.
If the Board of Pardons and Paroles does the right thing and recommends clemency for Robert, Governor Jack Markell can support or reject that decision, so we want to make sure he hears us say "SAVE ROBERT GATTIS!".
Contact him at his Wilmington office:
(302) 577-3210
Fax: (302) 577-3118
or his Dover office:
(302) 744-4101
Fax: (302) 739-2775
Also, if you able to get to Delaware tomorrow, please attend this event for Robert in honor of Martin Luther King Jr's legacy:
Darby Tillis, exonerated former Illinois death row prisoner and others join members of DeCEDP as well as members of Occupy Delaware and Occupy Dover to protest the execution of Delaware death row inmate Robert Gattis, scheduled for ONE WEEK from today, January 20th.
•12... - 2 pm. RALLY FOR ROBERT at Rodney Square, 2 E. 11th St, Wilmington
(then caravan down to Dover for phase two of our rally)
•3 - 5 pm. RALLY FOR ROBERT at Legislative Mall, 411 Legislative Hall, Dover
PLEASE COME AND JOIN US for both phases of our protest if possible, or if only able to meet us for one part, that is great too! We hope to see you in Wilmington or Dover, or both!!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for nonviolence and part of his message was for us to abolish the death penalty. This weekend is the perfect weekend for us to Stand up for Robert and OPPOSE his execution, as we honor Dr. King.
Dr. King had these words to say about the death penalty:
"I do not think God approves the death penalty for any crime - rape and
murder included. Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern
criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the
nature of God."
"I should be on the front line for those advocating the death penalty, [but]
we have always been consistently against the death penalty."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot
drive out hate; only love can do that. "
"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge,
aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. "
That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is
always right to do the right thing.
"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of
the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in
the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we
are less prone to hate our enemies. "
Coretta Scott King: "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the
victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to
the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is
not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in
the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder."
Please help spread the word about Robert's case. Read more about his case here.
Towards Justice,
Randi
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20) Advisory: Mumia Abu-Jamal's conditions worsen dramatically after move off death row -
01/12/2012
After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary
Contact:
Nathan Tempey,
Communications Coordinator
communications@nlg.org
212-679-5100, ext. 15
New York
http://www.nlg.org/news/press-releases/after-death-row-transfer-nlg-vp-mumia-abu-jamal-languishes-in-solitary-2/
Over a month after National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Vice President Mumia Abu-Jamal was moved from death row, he remains in transitional solitary confinement under harsh restrictions.
"Mumia's move off death row is a hollow victory if it means he is subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of the United Nations Convention against Torture," said NLG Executive Director Heidi Boghosian.
Since Mr. Abu-Jamal's transfer to administrative custody at SCI Mahanoy on December 7, 2011 he has been held in conditions far more restrictive than death row at SCI Greene, where he spent the last 17 years. He is now shackled and handcuffed whenever outside his cell; his visitation is cut to one hour-long visit per week; the number of stamps and envelopes he can use is greatly limited; his phone call privileges are reduced; and his commissary privileges have been revoked. He is also barred from having a television, typewriter or radio in his cell, and access to personal possessions such as books is severely limited.
The National Lawyers Guild and the Human Rights Research Fund sent Pennsylvania corrections department secretary John Wetzel a letter yesterday, calling on him to move Mr. Abu-Jamal out of administrative custody in SCI Mahanoy's Restrictive Housing Unit and into general population.
"Once the District Attorney announced that its office would not seek a new sentencing trial, Mr. Abu-Jamal should have been transferred into general population," the letter reads. "Such a transfer is not dependent on a judge's formal resentencing to life imprisonment. Given that, and given his exemplary disciplinary record, we can only conclude that Mr. Abu-Jamal's prolonged detainment in solitary confinement is in retaliation for his highly publicized and internationally-supported efforts to secure a new trial, and intended to placate those who have been demanding his execution."
A petition in support of the letter is now circulating
Convicted of the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist whose case and writings about the criminal justice system have garnered international attention. The Philadelphia district attorney's office ended its pursuit of the death penalty last month after a federal appeals court found that jury instructions at Mr. Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial were misleading.
The NLG has long maintained that Mr. Abu-Jamal is entitled to a new and fair trial. Procedural irregularities plagued his case from the outset, including blatant constitutional violations.
Mr. Abu-Jamal has served as the NLG's jailhouse lawyer vice president for over a decade.
The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 and is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has members in every state.
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