Thursday, May 01, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2014

6-year-old child detained on his way to school

Published on Apr 23, 2014
At approximately 7 am this morning, Rami Rajabi, a six-year-old child, was 20 meters away from checkpoint 29 when he threw several pebbles in al-Khalil (Hebron).

As Rami walked away towards his school, three Israeli soldiers burst out of an alleyway, grabbed his arm, and detained him in the street.

After approximately 20 minutes of pressure from locals and activists, the child was released and was taken home by a friend of his family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTxJb-HLp70


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No Copyright for Marx Engels Collected Works 

Petition by Ammar Aziz, Lahore, Pakistan 

http://www.change.org/petitions/lawrence-wishart-no-copyright-for-marx-engels-collected-works?recruiter=91032950&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

It is immensely ironic that a private publishIng company is claiming the copyright of the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the philosophers who wrote against the monopoly of capitalism and its origin, private property, all their lives.

Marxists Internet Archieve is an internatioanl, public archieve which gives free access to a wide range of academic and historical writings about Marxism in multiple langauges. Lawrence & Wishart is a private publishing house in Britain which claims to hold the copyright of Marx Engels Collected Works. During the last several years, the Marx Engels Collected Works have been read by the millions of people on the Marxists Internet Archeive (MIA). However, now the private publishing company, Lawrence & Wishart - which loves to position itself as a 'radical company', claiming historical links with the Britain's Communist Party - has directed MIA to delete all texts originating from Marx Engels Collected Works (MECW).

If this happens, MECW would not be accessible on the internet for free, from 30th April, 2014, and that would be a huge loss for the students and political activists who continue to utilize this free academic source.

You cannot privatize their writings -- they are the collective property of the people they wrote for. Privatization of Marx and Engels' writings is like getting a trademark for the words 'socialism' or 'communism'.

Say NO to the copyright law for the founders of scientific socialism. Let's protest against Lawrence & Wishart for this ironic monopoly.

The petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/lawrence-wishart-no-copyright-for-marx-engels-collected-works?recruiter=91032950&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition


To: Lawrence & Wishart, 99a Wallis Road London E9 5LN
Sally Davison, Managing Editor
Lawrence & Wishar

It is a matter of a serious concern for us that you have directed the Marxists Internet Archive to delete all the writings from Marx Engels Collected Works. As an organization which has been affiliated with the Britain's Communist Party in the past and which is known for publishing progressive literature, that's low!

We urgently demand you to take back this nasty, capitalistic decision and let the collected works remain a collective source of knowledge.

No Copyright for Marx Engels Collected Works!

Sincerely,
[Your name] 

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Native American Shuts Up Anti-immigration demonstrators 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfek6ydf3M

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FROM MARIKANA, SOUTH AFRICA TO OAKLAND, CA:
THE STRUGGLE FOR WORKERS POWER

The fall of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 was a watershed victory. It culminated decades of struggle by the Black and Colored South African masses, a struggle supported by millions in the U.S. and around the world. The victory brought to power the Tripartite government of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

Now, two decades later, the ANC-led Tripartite government represents big business's interests — especially the interests of U.S. and European-based banks and corporations. This has led the government to brutally attack workers who fight back against austerity. Indeed, in 2012, at the Marikana mine, this government massacred 34 striking miners at the behest of the mine owners.

Black poverty has worsened. Inequality has worsened. Trade union officials collaborate with employers against workers, youth, and unemployed. Does this sound familiar? Isn't the situation similar in the US, with union officials not fighting employer and government attacks on workers, like the machinists at Boeing?

But in South Africa, there's an exciting new development: for the first time since the fall of Apartheid, there's a serious challenge to the Tripartite government's rule, and it comes from the largest and most militant union in Africa. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has broken with the COSATU leadership and called for South Africans not to support the ANC in this year's elections. It is currently building a workers' party and united front to lead the struggle against the capitalist onslaught of deregulation, privatization, and strike breaking.

We are privileged to present  Brother Mphumzi Maqungo,  the national treasurer of NUMSA and past chair of NUMSA's autoworker shop steward network, to discuss these developments.

Thursday, May 1st, 7:00 p.m.
ILWU Hall, Henry Schmidt Room
400 N. Point St./Mason, San Francisco

Friday, May 2, 12 Noon at UC Berkeley, McCone Hall (Room  575)
Saturday, May 3rd, 2pm. Black Repertory Theater; 3201 Adeline,
Berkeley (one block south of Ashby BART)

For updates or to get involved in building for these events, contact the May Day Committee in Solidarity with South African Workers
at: twscltransportworkers.org. Reach us directly at  (510)325-8664  or  (415)282-1908

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Please hold the date and attend…

A Celebration of Life and Struggle
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Welcome Home Lynne Stewart!
Free all political prisoners! End racist mass incarceration! Abolish the death penalty! Stop police brutality and murder!

Join Lynne Stewart and Pam Africa Sunday, May 4, 6 pm reception; 7pm rally

Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland
Donation $10

Initial Bay Area Tour Schedule:
Friday, May 2: San Francisco, Host: National Lawyers Guild, 6 pm 518 Valencia St., SF
Saturday, May 3, Palo Alto, Host: Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, afternoon
Saturday, May 3, San Jose, Host, San Jose Peace and Justice Center & NLG South Bat, evening
Sunday, May 4, Oakland, Host: Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal & Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Monday, May 5: Marin, evening
Tuesday, May 6: Sacramento, evening

Sponsors:
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal & Lynne Stewart Defense Committee

510-268-9429   jmackler@lmi.net
Tour endorsers (initial list): SF Bay Area National Lawyers Guild • Middle East Children’s Alliance • United National Antiwar Coalition • Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • World Can’t Wait • Freedom Socialist Party • Marin Peace and Justice Center • Peninsula Peace and Justice Center • Sacramento Area Peace Council • WILPF • SF Gray Panthers • Socialist Action • International Action Center • Freedom Archives

— This message sent to you by: The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal --

Lynne Stewart's release from prison was the result of great public support, an international petition campaign, and persistence by her husband. This victory for a political prisoner, as well as the release of political prisoner Marshall Eddie Conway after 44 years in prison; political prisoner Maroon Shoatz's transfer from solitary confinement to general prison population, inspires our efforts to free all political prisoners.

The exoneration of innocent death row prisoner, Glen Ford, just before the state of Louisiana was set to execute him, is another blow to the existence of the racist death penalty. And the massive hunger strikes organized by prisoners, including undocumented detainees, in California, Washington, Texas and Georgia are an example of resistance to prisoners and workers everywhere. 

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:
A. ARTICLES IN FULL
B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.

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A. ARTICLES IN FULL
(Unless otherwise noted)

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1) Egypt Sentences Top Islamist and Over 680 Others to Death
By




2) U.S. and Philippines Agree to a 10-Year Pact on the Use of Military Bases
By




3) Forced to Flee Radiation, Fearful Japanese Villagers Are Reluctant to Return
By




4) Recovery Has Created Far More Low-Wage Jobs Than Better-Paid Ones
"In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."
By





5) NAACP in Bed with Racist Donald Sterling
By Peter Dreier
Common Dreams 
April 29, 2014
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/28-1




6)  NO U.S. INTERVENTION IN VENEZUELA !
April 28, 2014
laborfightback.org 


7) Donald Sterling’s Willing Enablers
Dave Zirin 
April 27, 2014 - 2:47 PM ET
http://www.thenation.com/blog/179554/donald-sterlings-willing-enablers




8) Senate Drops Bid to Report on Drone Use
By




9) Snowden Retained Expert in Espionage Act Defense
By and MATT APUZZO




10) Twelve Deportation Protesters Arrested at White House
By




11) Disparate Forces Align Over Affordable Rents
By ELI ROSENBERG





12) One Execution Botched, Oklahoma Delays the Next
By




13) Nearly Half of New Yorkers Are Struggling to Get By, Study Finds
By




14) In the U.S., Punishment Comes Before the Crimes
By Eduardo Porter





15) Changed Life of the Poor: Better Off, but Far Behind
By




16) State-Sponsored Horror in Oklahoma
"There is growing evidence that capital sentences are handed out in an arbitrary and racially biased way, often to innocent victims. A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that more than 4 percent of all death-row defendants are innocent."
By




17) Three Mile Island, and Nuclear Hopes and Fears
By




18) Protesters Defy Government Ban on May Day Demonstrations in Turkey
By SEBNEM ARSU and CEYLAN YEGINSU




19) Outrage Across Ideological Spectrum in Europe Over Flawed Lethal Injection in U.S.
"A Twitter message by someone who pretends to be God somehow caught the European mood. From @TheTweetOfGod: 'How could Oklahoma botch an execution? If there’s one thing I would expect Americans to know how to do by now, it’s kill somebody.'”
By




20) Hundreds in Albuquerque Voice Distrust of the Police
By



















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1) Egypt Sentences Top Islamist and Over 680 Others to Death
By

MINYA, Egypt — An Egyptian court here on Monday sentenced to death the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and more than 680 other people after a swift mass trial on charges of inciting or committing acts of violence that led to the destruction of a police station and the killing of an officer.

The verdict, after a trial lasting only a few minutes, came just a month after the same judge drew condemnation from around the world for sentencing 529 other people to death in a similarly lightning-fast mass trial. The judge, Sayedd Yousef, affirmed the death sentences Monday of about 40 of the defendants in that mass trial and commuted the others to life in prison, which is understood here to mean 25 years.The verdicts Monday and last month are subject to appeal. Both sets of trials involved sentences in absentia for many defendants who are still at large, and if they are arrested all will receive a retrial. But there has been little, if any, public criticism of the decisions from within the Egyptian judiciary, once regarded as a bastion of relative liberalism within Egypt’s authoritarian system.

The speed and scale of the latest batch of sentences, in defiance of international outrage at the earlier one, appeared to underscore the judiciary’s energetic support for the new military-led government’s sweeping crackdown on its political opponents, including Islamist supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as more liberal groups.

In a separate ruling on Monday, a Cairo court banned the activities of the April 6 group, a liberal organization that spearheaded the revolt against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The group continued its work opposing police brutality and pushing for democratic reforms under Mr. Morsi, and it has continued to defend the right to dissent since his military ouster last summer.

On Monday, a Cairo court ruled that the group had been collaborating with foreign powers and “committing acts that distort the image of the Egyptian state,” according to the official state newspaper.

The group’s leader, Ahmed Maher, and a co-founder, Mohamed Adel, are both already serving three-year sentences on charges of organizing an unauthorized street protest against the new military-backed government.

The rulings in the city of Minya, on the other hand, involved Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters. Both sets of cases related to a violent backlash against the police in August after the security forces used deadly force to break up sit-ins held by Mr. Morsi’s supporters to protest his ouster, killing as many as 1,000 people, according to the best estimates by independent rights groups.

Minya, an Islamist stronghold that was at the center of a militant insurgency 20 years ago, was a major flash point of the violence, with Islamists attacking several churches and police stations.

In each of the batches of sentences issued Monday and last month, however, only one police officer was alleged to have been killed, and none of those sentenced to death on Monday was charged with participating in his murder. Many of those punished, including Mohamed Badie, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, were sentenced to death for lesser crimes, including committing or inciting acts of violence.

Mr. Badie was in Cairo at the time of the attacks, and he repeatedly emphasized nonviolence in his public remarks in the period leading up the crackdown and the backlash against it.“Our peacefulness is stronger than their bullets,” he declared in a speech at the main Cairo sit-in, a phrase that became a Brotherhood rallying cry. It was unclear what basis the court found for linking him to the attacks.

His death sentence marks another dramatic escalation in the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Badie, 70, who trained as a veterinarian and is known as the group’s supreme guide, is revered by hundreds of thousands of Islamists around Egypt as a religious authority and teacher.

If carried out, his death sentence would mark the first execution by Egypt of a supreme guide in more than six decades of often bloody attempts to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. A supreme guide was sentenced to death during the crackdown on the Brotherhood when President Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in 1954, but the verdict was commuted to life in prison and the supreme guide, Hassan el-Houdaiby, was ultimately released.

Although the Brotherhood was not formally legalized until after the 2011 revolt here, the group integrated itself into Egyptian civil society during Mr. Mubarak’s three decades in power. The Brotherhood ran schools, hospitals and charities, and fielded candidates who formed an opposition bloc in the Parliament dominated by Mr. Mubarak’s party.

As supreme guide, Mr. Badie was a household name whose statements and activities were front-page news in Egypt, and the police refrained from jailing him even during periodic roundups of other Brotherhood leaders.



Mayy el-Sheikh contributed reporting.

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2) U.S. and Philippines Agree to a 10-Year Pact on the Use of Military Bases
By

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The United States has reached a 10-year agreement with the Philippines that will give American warships, planes and troops greater access to bases in the archipelago, American officials said Sunday.

The deal, which will be the centerpiece of President Obama’s visit to the Philippines on Monday, returns the United States to a visible presence in the country for the first time since the American military gave up its sprawling naval and air bases, including one at Subic Bay, in 1992.

The accord will also give the United States more flexibility to project its military assets in a region that has become increasingly tense, with China and its neighbors, including the Philippines, squabbling over territorial claims in the East and South China Seas.

Still, administration officials said the deal was not intended to contain China.“We’re not doing this because of China,” said Evan Medeiros, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council. “We’re doing this because we have a longstanding alliance partner.”

The American military presence in the Philippines was a frequent source of tension between the countries, who are treaty allies. But the rapid response of American ships and planes after Typhoon Haiyan, amid a more chaotic Philippine response, has increased popular support for allowing the United States military to have more access.

“We have a long history as an alliance, but also a complex history,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “One event that gave momentum was the typhoon response.”

The scope and timing of the agreement were still to be determined through further consultations, Mr. Medeiros said. He did not rule out the use of the Subic Bay site, which was one of the largest American bases overseas and a symbol of the American presence in the Philippines.

Mr. Medeiros emphasized that the deal would not open the door to the re-establishment of American bases in the Philippines. Even so, given the political situation, it required eight months of negotiations.

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3) Forced to Flee Radiation, Fearful Japanese Villagers Are Reluctant to Return
By

MIYAKOJI, Japan — Ever since they were forced to evacuate during the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant three years ago, Kim Eunja and her husband have refused to return to their hilltop home amid the majestic mountains of this rural village for fear of radiation.

But now they say they may have no choice. After a nearly $250 million radiation cleanup here, the central government this month declared Miyakoji the first community within a 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant to be reopened to residents. The decision will bring an end to the monthly stipends from the plant’s operator that have allowed Ms. Kim to relocate to an apartment in a city an hour away.

“The government and the media say the radiation has been cleaned up, but it’s all lies,” said Ms. Kim, 55, who is from South Korea, and who with her Japanese husband runs a small Korean restaurant outside Miyakoji. “I want to run away, but I cannot. We have no more money.”

She is not the only one. While the central government and national news media have trumpeted the reopening of Miyakoji as a happy milestone in Japan’s recovery from the devastating March 2011 accident, many residents tell a darker story. They insist their homes remain too dangerous or too damaged to inhabit and that they have not received enough financial compensation to allow them to start anew somewhere else.

They criticize the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, for failing to reimburse them for the value of their homes, usually their family’s largest financial asset. Depending on where they lived, they say they have received amounts from half the preaccident value to just $3,000, a tiny fraction of the original value of their homes.

Many villagers complain that these amounts are not enough to move farther away from the plant, which is still leaking radiation, or to repair their traditional wooden farmhouses, which have started to rot and collapse since they were damaged by the earthquake and then abandoned.

As a result, many evacuees have been forced to live in a state of limbo since the accident, unable to leave barracks-like temporary housing, or end their dependency on Tepco for monthly stipends to live in apartments outside the village. Tepco pays the stipends under orders from the government.

Now they feel growing pressure to return whether they want to or not. The government has declared that the stipends, which range from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000, will end next March, when temporary housing will also begin to be closed. Villagers who move back before then will receive a $9,000 bonus from Tepco, adding to the pressure to return.

“Tepco is being so stupidly unfair with the compensation,” said Yukei Tomitsuka, the mayor of Tamura, the city that administers Miyakoji. “We are the victims. Should we have to go hat in hand to Tepco to ask for more money?”

Experts call Miyakoji a forerunner of the problems that will be faced by the 150,000 people displaced by the accident over all, as additional communities are reopened as a result of a $36 billion government-financed cleanup. They say the evacuees will feel increasing pressure to go back from a government that wants to restore the preaccident status quo as much as possible to limit criticism of the powerful nuclear industry.

“This is inhumane and irresponsible,” said Teruhisa Maruyama, a lawyer who leads the Support Group for Victims of the Nuclear Accident, a Tokyo-based legal organization that helps residents seek increased compensation.“The national government knows that full compensation could add up to big money, enough to raise public doubts about the wisdom of using nuclear power in Japan.”

Tepco refused to comment, beyond saying that it had so far paid out $36 billion for all types of compensation. “Our company is sincerely listening to the details of each claim,” said Tatsuhiro Yamagishi, a Tepco spokesman. A spokesman for the Education Ministry, which is setting compensation standards, said that the ministry was trying to respond to evacuees’ needs, but that it was hard to meet all the requests. A government committee set up to resolve compensation-related disputes says it has received more than 10,000 requests from disgruntled evacuees.

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Tamura last month, Mayor Tomitsuka handed him a letter asking that residents be given more compensation for their homes. The prime minister has yet to reply.

Almost 500 residents of Miyakoji have recently joined one of two separate group lawsuits demanding that Tepco pay more compensation, a rare show of rising frustrations in a close-knit Japanese rural community, which usually abhors conflict-causing litigation.

While many evacuees, particularly families with children, say they do not want to go back because of radiation, the government says that Miyakoji is safe. Radiation levels were relatively low there to begin with, since most of the plant’s radiation plume missed the area. The massive cleanup, which involved some 1,300 workers scraping up contaminated dirt and resurfacing areas around homes with clean gravel, lowered radiation levels even further.

On a recent trip here, radiation measured up to 0.23 microsieverts per hour, about three times preaccident levels but below those of some communities outside the evacuation zone. Whether or not that level is safe is a contentious question: Experts admit that they know little about the health effects of long-term exposure to low-dose radiation.

Authorities had hoped that Miyakoji could serve as a model for repopulating the evacuated communities. So far, only about a third of residents have returned, and most of them are older villagers who feel they have less to worry about from the long-term cancer risks of radiation.

All of the village’s 3,000 residents were evacuated the day after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the plant. The majority of villagers, who lived farther than 12 miles from the plant, were paid $3,000 to cover damage to their homes and were allowed to return six months later. Most have yet to move back even now, mainly for fear of radiation, though some complain that stores and other services have not reopened.

The 357 villagers with homes inside the 12-mile zone were not allowed to return until April 1, more than three years after the accident. They received the highest compensation, about half the preaccident value of their homes.

One was Yoshikuni Munakata, 63, who on a recent afternoon was repairing a collapsed shed at his farm about nine miles southwest of the destroyed plant.

Mr. Munakata said the $50,000 that he had received in compensation was not nearly enough to fix the old farmhouse built by his grandfather, where the wooden floors warped so badly that the sliding doors no longer close. But while he could not move back, he also cannot leave. He said he tried to do so right after the accident, going to the northern island of Hokkaido to start a new life as a van driver. However, he said he gave up after 18 months for lack of money, and came back to collect his monthly living stipends.

He said he is unsure of what will happen to him once those stipends end in March.

“My home is a total loss,” said Mr. Munakata. He said he was not afraid of radiation because he used to work at the Fukushima Daiichi plant before retiring. “The compensation payments force us to come back, but they are not enough to let us live here again.”

Among those who have not come back are Ms. Kim and her husband, Satoshi Mizuochi. They sank their life savings of about $300,000 into their home, where they had planned to spend their remaining years.

With few buyers likely to step forward, they say their home is now essentially worthless. But with only a tiny income from their restaurant, they say they will probably have to go back once their rent stipends end in March. “They want to say that everything is back to normal so they can keep their nuclear plants,” said Mr. Mizuochi, 57, who helps his wife at the restaurant. “Failing to compensate us for our losses is a way of pressuring us to go back.”


Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.

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4) Recovery Has Created Far More Low-Wage Jobs Than Better-Paid Ones
"In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."
By

WASHINGTON — The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones. That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group, analyzing employment trends four years into the recovery.

“Fast food is driving the bulk of the job growth at the low end — the job gains there are absolutely phenomenal,” said Michael Evangelist, the report’s author. “If this is the reality — if these jobs are here to stay and are going to be making up a considerable part of the economy — the question is, how do we make them better?”

The report shows that total employment has finally surpassed its pre-recession level. “The good news is we’re back to zero,” Mr. Evangelist said.

But job losses and gains have been skewed. Higher-wage industries — like accounting and legal work — shed 3.6 million positions during the recession and have added only 2.6 million positions during the recovery. But lower-wage industries lost two million jobs, then added 3.8 million.

With 10.5 million Americans still looking for work — the unemployment rate is 6.7 percent — employers feel no pressure to raise wages for those who are working. As a result, the average household’s take-home pay has declined through the recession and the recovery to $51,017 in 2012 from $55,627 in 2007, after adjusting for inflation.

With joblessness high and job gains concentrated in low-wage industries, hundreds of thousands of Americans have accepted positions that pay less than they used to make, in some cases, sliding out of the middle class and into the ranks of the working poor.

That includes Connie Ogletree, a former administrative and executive assistant who now earns $7.25 an hour at a McDonald’s in Atlanta. “It was 40 years ago that I had my first fast-food job, at a Dairy Queen,” said Ms. Ogletree, 55. “This is my second.”

Ms. Ogletree is in school working toward a bachelor’s degree, in the hope of returning to a white-collar position. But in the meantime, she and her older sister have scrimped and saved to make ends meet on her meager earnings.

She said that she appreciated her job — many do not have one — but that she found the work tough.

“When you go into a fast-food restaurant, you want to be sure the people in the back are doing the best job they can,” she said. “You want them not to be worried about missing a day if they’re sick, to be able to go to a child’s play at school or a P.T.A. meeting. I’d like a vacation once a year, but my employer doesn’t offer that, or sick days.”

The National Employment Law Project study found that there were about a million fewer jobs in middle-wage industries — including parts of the health care system, loan servicing and real estate — than there were when the recession hit.

Economists worry that even a stronger recovery might not bring back jobs in traditionally middle-class occupations eroded by mechanization and offshoring. The American work force might become yet more “polarized,” with positions easier to find at the high and low ends than in the middle.

The swelling of the low-wage work force has led to a push for policies to raise the living standards of the poor, including through job training, expansion of health care coverage and a higher minimum wage.President Obama has supported a Democratic proposal to lift the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from its current level of $7.25.

“Nobody who works full-time should ever have to live in poverty,” Mr. Obama said on Saturday in his weekly address. “That’s why nearly three in four Americans support raising the minimum wage.”

Raising it to $10.10 would “lift wages for nearly 28 million Americans across the country,” he said. “We’re not just talking about young people on their first job. The average minimum-wage worker is 35 years old. They work hard, often in physically demanding jobs.”

But with congressional inaction stalling that proposal, many state and local governments have forged ahead on their own. States including Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, California and Rhode Island have raised their local minimum wages. And a total of 34 states are considering lifting their wage floors, while activists in other states are pushing for ballot referendums to do so.

“They’re actually getting the job done, so that workers get a raise,” said Thea Lee, the deputy chief of staff of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “The hope is that it creates momentum nationally and builds an activist base.”

But many Republicans oppose raising the wage floor while the economy remains weak. And many businesses staunchly oppose higher minimum wages because of the threat to their bottom lines.

The National Employment Law Project study found especially strong growth in restaurants and food services, administrative and waste services and retail trades. Those industries — which often pay wages at the federal minimum — accounted for about 40 percent of the increase in private sector employment over the past four years.

There has also been strong jobs growth in some high-paying industries, like professional, scientific and technical services — a category that includes accountants, lawyers, software developers and engineers. That sector accounted for about 9 percent of the private-sector job gains in the recovery.



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5) NAACP in Bed with Racist Donald Sterling
By Peter Dreier
Common Dreams 
April 29, 2014
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/28-1
 
In an excruciating example of bad timing, the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP was scheduled to bestow its Lifetime Achievement Award to Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, at its May 15 banquet. Sterling is now under fire for racist comments caught on a recording that surfaced on the TMZ website. Even President Barack Obama weighed in, condemning Sterling’s remarks as “incredibly offensive.” The NBA is now investigating Sterling’s remarks and could invoke sanctions, including removing him as Clippers’ owner.

Embarrassed by the controversy, the NAACP announced Sunday morning, via Twitter, that is was withdrawing the award, which was to be presented at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles as part of the celebration of the chapter’s 100th anniversary. The NAACP also plans to honor Rev. Al Sharpton and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti—as well as Walmart’s local charity and political operative and a top Fed Ex executive—at the gala event.

Of course, when the NAACP decided to honor Sterling, it could not have predicted that the billionaire would be the center of a controversy about his racist remarks. The entire news media has been focusing on Sterling’s angry comments to his girlfriend, who apparently taped their April 9 phone conversation in which the Clippers owner admonished her for posting photos of her with Black people, including Magic Johnson, the former LA Lakers star and now LA Dodgers co-owner. “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with Black people. Do you have to?” Sterling allegedly said. He also told her: “You can sleep with them. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”

Yes, there’s no way that the NAACP could have known that Sterling would be caught making those comments. But there’s also no way that the NAACP could not have known that Sterling has a long history of racist comments and racial discrimination in his rental properties.

Indeed, the NAACP seems to suffer from amnesia. Almost exactly five years ago, a similar controversy arose when the civil rights group honored Sterling with the same award! At the time, Elgin Baylor, who served as the Clippers general manager from 1986 to 2008, had just filed an age and racial discrimination suit against Sterling. According to Baylor, Sterling had a “Southern plantation” view, preferring to field a team of “poor Black boys from the South … playing for a white coach.”

Despite the controversy, the NAACP proceeded to give Sterling its award, even though the billionaire’s track record of housing discrimination against African Americans, compounded by the brouhaha with Baylor, was already well-known. To justify the 2009 award, the president of the Los Angeles branch told the Los Angeles Times that Sterling “has a unique history of giving to the children of L.A,” revealing that the owner donates anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 tickets a game to youth groups for nearly every Clippers home game.” (Of course, Sterling may simply have wanted to fill the many empty seats at the woeful Clippers’ home games.)

The NAACP’s love affair with Sterling apparently knew no limits. The group had already given Sterling its Presidents Award in 2008, according to Sterling’s own website, which is primarily devoted to a long list of the many honors bestowed on him by various charitable groups to which he’s contributed.

Of course, many nonprofit groups rely on charitable donations from wealthy donors and corporations. Often their philanthropy is altruistic and heartfelt, but sometimes their gifts are self-serving, designed to help a company or a billionaire cleanse a soiled reputation or peddle influence with politicians. Many donors expect to see their names on buildings or to be rewarded with public celebrations of their philanthropy, including receiving awards.

The NAACP-Sterling relationship raises the larger question of whether nonprofit organizations should have any standards for bestowing honors on their donors. When is a donor such a disreputable person or corporation that its donation—and the strings attached to it—soils the reputation and moral standing of the nonprofit group, despite its many good deeds?

In the early 1900s, John D. Rockefeller began his philanthropic foundation to try to divert public attention from his reputation as a vicious robber baron, particularly after his private army killed striking workers, women, and children at the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado. In the 1970s, Tufts University bestowed an honorary degree on Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos—for “humanitarianism” no less!—in exchange for a multi-million grant from the Marcos Foundation to the university’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at a time when her husband, the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was being chastised by human rights groups. Indeed, many corporate tycoons and other disreputable folks engage in philanthropy, attaching all kinds of strings to their charity. They operate under the adage, it is better to give and receive.

So it should be no surprise that Donald Sterling has likes to throw money around to nonprofit charities. What’s troubling is why an organization like the NAACP, dedicated to eliminating racial injustice, should help Sterling whitewash his reputation.

Sterling, who turned 80 on Saturday, is one of the largest property owners and landlords in the Los Angeles area. He owns and manages about 119 apartment buildings with some 5,000 units, according to the U.S. Justice Department, which has sued him for discrimination.

In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department sued Sterling and his wife for excluding Black tenants and favoring Korean tenants in some of their properties. According to the Los Angeles Times, Justice Department lawyers presented evidence that Sterling and his wife made statements “indicating that African Americans and Hispanics were not desirable tenants and that they preferred Korean tenants” occupy buildings they owned in Koreatown. Three years later, the Justice Department and Sterling reached a settlement. Sterling agreed to pay a record $2.7 million. It was, at the time, the largest settlement ever obtained by the U.S. Justice Department in a housing discrimination case involving rental apartments.

Sterling, in fact, has a long history of landlord misdeeds. In 2008, the LA Weekly summarized some of the most egregious examples of Sterling’s grotesque greed:

· 2001: City of Santa Monica sued him, claiming he harassed eight tenants in three rent-controlled buildings by threatening to evict them for having potted plants on balconies. He paid $25,000 in settlements.

· 2002: Sterling sued apparent lover Alexandra Castro for the title to a $1 million Beverly Hills home. Castro said the dwelling was a gift from him to her. The case was settled for undisclosed terms.

· 2003: Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles represented a tenant Sterling tried to evict on Lincoln Boulevard for allegedly tearing down notices in an elevator. Sterling won. The tenant was evicted.

· 2004: Sterling and other landlords won a major appellate case against Santa Monica’s stringent Tenant Harassment Ordinance, which Santa Monica’s city attorney had used to order Sterling and other landlords to stop issuing eviction notices, terming the notices “harassment.”

· 2004: Elisheba Sabi, an elderly widow represented by Los Angeles Legal Aid Foundation, sued Sterling for refusing her Section 8 voucher to rent an apartment.

· 2005: Sterling sued landowner Larry Taylor for allegedly reneging on an unsigned note that agreed to sell Sterling properties worth about $17 million. The “handwritten note” war made it to the California Supreme Court. Taylor won last year.

· 2005: Sterling settled a housing-discrimination lawsuit filed by the Housing Rights Center, which represented more than a dozen tenants. He paid nearly $5 million in legal fees and a probably much larger, but undisclosed, sum to plaintiffs.

In 2006, Sterling paid for a newspaper ad announcing that the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation would develop a “state-of-the-art $50 million dollar” project for “over 91,000 homeless people” in LA’s Skid Row neighborhood. The ad included a photo of a smiling Sterling above the quote: “Please don’t forget the children, they need our help.” At the time, many homeless advocates criticized the plan for being more like a mega-warehouse than a social service agency. But they need not have worried. Although Sterling spent millions of dollars to buy properties in the area, he never carried through on the homeless project. And now that the Skid Row neighborhood has gentrified—pushing many low-income people out of the area, Sterling is sitting on valuable property.

In addition to this track record of civil rights and tenants’ rights violations, as well as blatant indifference to human suffering, Sterling has a shameful reputation as a man who abuses his employees, acknowledges paying for sex with prostitutes, and has had a string of girlfriends who live in expensive homes and drive luxury cars paid for by the real estate mogul.

Given his reputation and this history, why would the Los Angeles NAACP honor Sterling for “lifetime achievement”? The answer? For the same reason that the NAACP is scheduled to honor Javier Angulo, Walmart’s director of community affairs, at the same May 15 banquet. Sterling and Walmart are both NAACP benefactors and the civil rights organization has been happy to take these corporation donations.

Anyone who has read the Los Angeles Times over the past decade couldn’t help but notice the hundreds of full-page and half-page ads that Sterling puts in the newspaper to promote his philanthropic endeavors. A self-congratulatory photo of Sterling inevitably adorns these ads, along with photos of the heads of dozens of nonprofit groups in the Los Angeles area who receive Sterling’s largesse. Many of these organizations, in turn, bestow awards on Sterling for his humanitarian gestures. This I’ll-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-my-back philanthropy is hardly unusual in America, but Sterling’s blatant self-promotion, designed to cleanse his reputation and burnish his ego, should win an award of its own. In this way, the NAACP is simply another cog in the Sterling PR machine.

The NAACP has an even more incestuous relationship with Walmart, the world’s largest private employer and the world’s most controversial corporation. The Arkansas-based Walmart has a long history of law-breaking, not only in retaliation for employee activism but also in exploiting immigrants, paying women less than men for the same jobs, breaking environmental laws, and bribing Mexican officials, among many other infractions.

The U.S. Department of Labor ordered Walmart to pay $4.8 million in back pay and fines to thousands of employees who were illegally denied overtime. It was also ordered to pay nearly $34 million in back pay to 87,000 employees. Last November, Walmart’s 1.3 million U.S. workers won a big victory when the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the retail giant had broken the law by firing and harassing employees who spoke out—and in some cases went on strike—to protest the company’s poverty pay and abusive labor practices.

Clergy, labor, and community groups have complained that Walmart pays many of its employees poverty-level wages, insists that many employees work part time, and provides few employees with affordable health insurance. The company’s low-paid employees are forced to apply, with direct assistance from Walmart, for publicly funded benefits like food stamps and Medicaid. A report released by the National Employment Law Project uncovered widespread abuse of low-paid temporary laborers who work in warehouses and transport goods to Wal-Mart’s stores.

Human rights groups criticize Wal-Mart for its use of sweatshop labor, in China and elsewhere, to manufacture the clothing and toys it sells. Walmart has recently earned well-deserved negative publicity for its complicity in thwarting safety improvements at Bangladesh sweatshops that make clothes sold in Walmart stores. One of them was the eight-story Rana Plaza factory building near Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, where in April 2013 at least 1,100 workers were killed after the building collapsed–the deadliest garment industry disaster in history.

Walmart is also the largest seller of shotguns and ammunition in the country. For years it was a member and large contributor to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business lobby group that aggressively supported “Stand Your Ground” laws, the racist “shoot first” law that was implicated in the death of Trayvon Martin, among others. Walmart executive Janet Scott was the co-chair of an ALEC committee that encouraged state legislators to enact these controversial pro-gun laws.

To overcome its terrible reputation, Walmart and its corporate foundation has invested heavily in strategic donations. This influence-peddling strategy includes giving campaign contributions to politicians, hiring well-connected lobbyists to do its bidding, mounting expensive PR and ballot campaigns to win public support, supporting conservative think tanks and lobby organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, and buying the support (or at least neutrality) of nonprofit organizations through philanthropy.

The NAACP has been on the receiving end of Walmart’s corporate philanthropy. Across the country, the NAACP has partnered with Walmart on a variety of fronts. Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchison observed that Walmart’s public relations and philanthropic effort “is part of a well-greased, on-going national PR and ad campaign by Wal-Mart to make dependable allies of Black consumers and leaders.”

For more than a decade, Wal-Mart’s single-minded goal has been to open more stores and generate more revenue–especially in urban areas, the company’s next frontier. But it hasn’t been easy. In many cities across the country, local environmental, consumer, labor, small business, religious, women’s rights, and other groups have fought against Walmart’s efforts to expand its low-wage business model.

Nowhere has the battle over Walmart been as intense as in the Los Angeles area. Eager to gain a foothold in the area a decade ago, Wal-Mart proposed building a mega-store in Inglewood, a mostly African-American and Hispanic working-class suburb. In 2004 the company spent about $1 million to mount a ballot initiative that would change the city’s zoning laws to allow Walmart to build its supercenter. Despite being outspent ten-to-one, a local community coalition defeated the ballot measure by a two-to-one margin. That same year, the Los Angeles City Council enacted a big-box law making it difficult for Walmart to open new stores.

Walmart temporarily retreated, but in 2011 it returned to greater Los Angeles with a vengeance, attempting to open a store in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood. It hired three powerful lobbying firms to help the company get the approvals it needed. And it hired the politically connected Javier Angulo–former employee at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials–to coordinate its local philanthropic program.

Under Angulo’s guidance, Wal-Mart donated millions of dollars to dozens of local nonprofits, including the NAACP, the Urban League, Homeboy Industries, California Charter Schools Association, Los Angeles Parents Union, Goodwill, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army, Union Rescue Mission, Meals on Wheels, Chrysalis, Children’s Hospital, and the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation, as well as several Asian American organizations, including Little Tokyo Service Center, Korean American Coalition, the Center for Asian Americans United for Self-Empowerment, and Chinatown Service Center.

Angulo made sure that whenever Walmart hands over a check to one of these groups, elected officials are there for the photo-op.

Walmart also sought to open a store in Altadena, a heavily African American suburb a few miles from Los Angeles. There, too, under Angulo’s supervision, Walmart donated to the Altadena NAACP as well as other African American organizations. Angulo also led the effort to win community support for the proposed store. The strategy paid off. Despite considerable opposition, especially from locally-owned businesses, many of Altadena’s African American leaders embraced Walmart’s plans. The new store opened in March 2013.

And in yet another display of either bad taste or blatant hypocrisy, the LA NAACP is giving its President Award to Shannon Brown, senior vice president of Fed Ex. Fed Ex is well-known as a union-busting company. Indeed, the Leadership Conference, a major civil rights coalition of which the NAACP is a member, issued a 2007 report entitled “Fed Up with FexEx: How Fed Ex Ground Tramples Workers Rights and Civil Rights,” about the company’s history of anti-union practices.

In 1903, the great historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk, now considered a classic critique of American racism and its impact on Black Americans, and six years later he was a founder of the NAACP. No doubt Du Bois would be turning in his grave if he knew that the NAACP—with its glorious history of civil rights activism—had sold its soul to Donald Sterling and Walmart.

Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program, at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (2012, Nation Books).

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6)  NO U.S. INTERVENTION IN VENEZUELA !
April 28, 2014
laborfightback.org 

The U.S. government's funding of right-wing, anti-labor forces in Venezuela is consistent with its long history of intervening in the affairs of Latin American and Caribbean countries. On the one hand, Washington 's aim is to bolster and fortify dependent regimes that support and protect multi-national corporations that inhumanly exploit workers in country after country. On the other hand, U.S. policy is to overtly and covertly spur the building of right-wing opposition groups to overthrow independent governments that seek to alleviate poverty conditions and legislate reforms and basic rights that promote the interest of the great majority of people.

Here is just a small number of examples of many interventions that have made for a very sordid record:

U.S. imposed an embargo of Cuba in 1960, which it has enforced against the Cuban people ever since. In 1961 the U.S. government launched the Bay of Pigs military invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.

U.S. financed and backed coup against elected Guatemala 's President Jacobo Arbenz on June 18-27, 1954, opening a period of bloody dictatorship.

U.S. financed and backed coup against Brazil 's elected President Joao Goulart on April 1, 1964, opening a period of bloody dictatorship. (New documents on this 50th anniversary published in Brazil this past month reveal a more direct U.S. involvement than was previously thought.)

U.S. financed and backed coup against Chile 's elected President Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973, opening a period of bloody dictatorship under Pinochet, which included the arrest of 130,000, the torture of 29,000 and the killing of additional thousands.

U.S. financed and backed coup against Argentina 's elected President Isabel Peron on March 24, 1976, opening a period of bloody dictatorship.

U.S. financed and backed coup against Venezuela's elected President Hugo Chavez on April 11, 2002 -- but this was a failed coup, as millions took to the streets to foil the coup-makers (who had already arrested Chávez) and reinstated Chávez.

U.S. financed and backed coup against Haiti 's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 28, 2004, opening a period of chaos and occupation by MINUSTAH troops.

U.S. financed and backed coup against Honduras ' elected President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2009 -- under Obama's watch, attacking and reversing gains on land reform and other issues that had been made under Zelaya.

It is no wonder that Venezuela is in the cross hairs at this time. Below is a sample resolution we urge unions and community groups to adopt as a demonstration of solidarity.

REVISED SAMPLE RESOLUTION:

No U.S. Intervention in Venezuela !

Whereas, the U.S. government, via the federal budget, has been funding political parties in Venezuela opposed to the Bolivarian government of Hugo Chávez and now of Nicolás Maduro to the tune of $90 million since 2000 -- with $5 million alone in the 2014 budget. (Source: The Guardian of London , February 18); and

Whereas, this millions of dollars in funding is being paid for by U.S. taxpayers and should instead be redirected to pay for jobs, infrastructure, education, unemployment compensation, food stamps and other urgently needed social programs at home; and

Whereas, this funding is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg, as numerous credible sources report hundreds of millions of dollars of covert support to the opposition forces in Venezuela over the past 15 years, including funding for the U.S.-backed coup attempt against Chávez on April 11, 2002; and

Whereas, on March 27, 2014, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson made the most threatening declaration to date by a top Obama administration official, stating that as far as Washington is concerned "all options -- including imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela -- are on the table if the Venezuelan government fails to make democratic room for the opposition"; and

Whereas, on February 16, 2014 the Mercosur governments ( Brazil , Argentina , Uruguay , Paraguay , and Venezuela ) released a statement on "the recent violent acts" in Venezuela and derided the "attempts [by the opposition] to destabilize the democratic order." The governments stated "their firm commitment to the full observance of democratic institutions and, in this context, reject[ed] the criminal actions of violent groups that want to spread intolerance and hatred in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a political tool"; and

Whereas, workers in Venezuela have made important gains under the Bolivarian regime initiated by Hugo Chávez -- gains that are unacceptable to international finance capital -- including national health care and Social Security for all, decent guaranteed pensions for all, strict labor laws to protect workers, and State control/ownership over the nation's resources such as petroleum, iron, aluminum, electricity, and more; and

Whereas, the recent spread of vandalism and chaos by the opposition forces is aimed at destabilizing the government in an attempt to force Venezuela to turn back the clock and undo all the gains made by the workers and people of Venezuela through their struggles; and

Whereas, the Obama administration has never formally recognized the government of Nicolás Maduro, who was elected to office in April 2013 in elections considered legitimate and clean by all foreign observers and all governments the world over, with the exception of the United States; and

Whereas, working people in the United States have no interest in backing Washington 's intervention and threats against the democratically elected government of Venezuela .

Therefore, be it resolved that the [name of labor or community organization] calls on the Obama administration to end all forms of overt and covert operations in Venezuela aimed at subverting the sovereignty of Venezuela, and therefore to end all U.S. funding of opposition political parties in Venezuela. The Venezuelan people should be left alone to determine their own destiny without any outside intervention, especially from Washington ; and

Therefore, be it resolved that the [name of labor or community organization] calls on the Obama administration to formally recognize the legitimately elected government of Nicolás Maduro; and

Therefore, be it finally resolved that a copy of this resolution be sent to other labor and community organizations, as well as to President Barack Obama and designated members of Congress, as may be determined locally.


Issued by the Labor Fightback Network. For more information, please call 973-944-8975 or email conference@laborfightback.org or write Labor Fightback Network, P.O. Box 187 , Flanders , NJ  07836 or visit our website at laborfightback.org. Facebook link : https://www.facebook.com/laborfightback

Donations to help fund the Labor Fightback Network based on its program of solidarity and labor-community unity are necessary for our work to continue and will be much appreciated. Please make checks payable to Labor Fightback Network and mail to the above P.O. Box or you can make a contribution online. Thanks!

  

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7) Donald Sterling’s Willing Enablers
Dave Zirin 
April 27, 2014 - 2:47 PM ET
http://www.thenation.com/blog/179554/donald-sterlings-willing-enablers
Michael Jordan as an NBA player, owner and cultural force, has always been proudly apolitical. Most famously, he refused to oppose segregationist Jesse Helms in his home state of North Carolina by saying, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Yet Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling's racist rant has so upended the NBA apple cart that even Jordan is speaking out.

He said:

“As an owner, I’m obviously disgusted that a fellow team owner could hold such sickening and offensive views. I’m confident that Adam Silver will make a full investigation and take appropriate action quickly. As a former player, I’m completely outraged. There is no room in the NBA—or anywhere else—for the kind of racism. I am appalled that this type of ignorance still exists within our country and at the highest levels of our sport. In a league where the majority of players are African-American, we cannot & must not tolerate discrimination at any level”

After a period of initial silence, Jordan is now just the latest NBA owner doing the previously unthinkable: speaking out against a fellow member of their exclusive club.

These belated words are welcome, but it is impossible to take any owner seriously that they are “shocked” or “outraged” by Sterling’s surreptitiously recorded statement, because “news” that Donald Sterling is racist qualifies as news only if you’ve been living on a hermetically sealed space station for the last decade. Even Clippers coach Doc Rivers’s comment that when he took the job last year—he didn’t know that Sterling was a bigot but “probably should have”—strains credulity. Sterling, with a great deal of attendant publicity, has been a racist in both word and deed for some time. His statements about African-Americans, Latinos and Asians—not to mention his misogyny—are exceeded only by his much-protested practices as a discriminatory slumlord. (If anyone wants to know this history, you can read this article.)

After Sterling’s latest racist eruption, the NBA is now dealing with a full-on public relations nightmare, and right when Sterling’s team, the Los Angeles Clippers, are real contenders to win an NBA championship. Two stunning developments have been immediately clear in the aftermath. The first is the sheer number of NBA players that have loudly and proudly condemned Sterling’s racism. (It has to be noted that one of first to do so, was the league’s biggest star, LeBron James.) There have also been reports that the LA Clippers even openly discussed boycotting their game on Sunday in protest. Instead they wore plain red warm-up shirts in protest.

The second is just how many people have not only expressed “shock” at Sterling’s words but also have said variations of “I have never heard anything like this from owners in the NBA.” I cannot speak to whether or not this is true. It is certainly possible that Donald Sterling is the only owner who seems to be in a constant state of arousal, fear and rage at what he calls the “beautiful black bodies” of the NBA. But every owner, as well as former commissioner David Stern—whose paternalism was called out by Dwyane Wade during the 2011 NBA lockout—needs to carry the burden of having counted this person as a colleague for so long. And lest we forget, Donald Sterling’s great benefactor, friend and partner was the late Dr. Jerry Buss, the owner of the Lakers, a person who was universally mourned without criticism after he passed away.

In his press conference, new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was asked by ESPN writer J.A. Adande about why, given his racist history, Sterling had never been sanctioned. Silver, in his best impression of Mark McGwire said, “I am not here to talk about the past.” But an NBA ownership structure that would tolerate a man like Donald Sterling for so long is, frankly, intolerable. Clearly owners—and maybe we should stop calling them “owners” given Sterling’s most recent, Romneyesque released comments—are now throwing him under their Humvee limos and driving back and forth because he’s become bad for business. Expect in the days ahead for Silver and the NBA owners to sanction Sterling or even pressure him to sell the franchise. But unless they look in the mirror and account for their years of enabling this man, it’s not enough.

One NBA player, whom I will not name, got in touch with me and just said, “I don’t doubt he’s racist, [but] I’m astounded (not shocked) that the league hasn’t taken action before. What concerns me is that the league is clearly only concerned with him possibly being a racist because he got caught, not because he is… Racism is being allowed as long as our customers and employees don’t find out.” This is the perception, and that perception is reality. Silver needs to own his league’s past and condemn it in the harshest possible terms. He needs to organize the owners to finally get Sterling out of this club, and then figure out a way to deal with the noxious fumes that remain. Maybe make the Clippers property of the city of Los Angeles so the club can actually be a force for good, particularly for those residents of the city who have been so damaged by Sterling’s existence both inside and outside the Staples Center.

[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming book “Brazil’s Dance with the Devil” (Haymarket) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

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8) Senate Drops Bid to Report on Drone Use
By

WASHINGTON — The Senate has quietly stripped a provision from an intelligence bill that would have required President Obama to make public each year the number of people killed or injured in targeted killing operations in Pakistan and other countries where the United States uses lethal force.

The move highlights the continued resistance inside the government about making these operations, primarily carried out using armed drones, more accountable to public scrutiny. In a letter to the Senate earlier this month, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, expressed concern that a public report would undermine the effectiveness of the operations.

The provision, passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee last year as part of its authorization bill, required Mr. Obama to make public an annual report on “the total number of combatants killed or injured during the preceding year by the use of targeted lethal force outside the United States by remotely piloted aircraft.” The provision was the same for civilians killed or injured. But officials said that the provision encountered almost immediate resistance both from intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers, some who have fought against any changes to the way the targeted killing program has been managed.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee and who originally offered the provision, agreed to take it out of the authorization bill to enable it to be passed unanimously.

But some sharply criticized the move, saying that lawmakers were avoiding an important debate about transparency in order to swiftly pass the bill.

“Congress is charged with oversight of the administration and this is a matter of life and death,” said Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “A basic report on the number of people killed shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

In a speech last May, Mr. Obama pledged to make drone operations more transparent, and administration officials said that the White House would like to gradually shift drone operations away from the C.I.A. — partly to allow targeted killing operations to be discussed more freely.

But nearly a year later, there has been little movement on the proposals. Some powerful lawmakers, including Ms. Feinstein, have opposed moving drone strikes out of the C.I.A. and managed to blunt any momentum to enact the White House proposals.

Mr. Clapper said in a letter that the executive branch was exploring ways to “provide the American people more information about the United States’ use of force outside areas of active hostilities.”

 

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9) Snowden Retained Expert in Espionage Act Defense
By and MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON — Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who provided journalists a trove of classified documents, retained a well-known Washington defense lawyer last summer in hopes of reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutors that would allow him to return to the United States and spare him significant prison time.

The lawyer, according to people familiar with the investigation, is Plato Cacheris, who has represented defendants in some of the highest-profile cases involving Espionage Act charges, including the convicted spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen and the convicted leaker Lawrence Franklin.

But nearly a year after Mr. Cacheris became involved, no agreement appears imminent, and government officials said the negotiations remained at an early stage.

The officials and others who discussed the case and Mr. Cacheris’s involvement in it spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks.

Mr. Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, where he received temporary asylum, was charged last year with multiple violations of the Espionage Act. He faces up to 30 years in prison, and prosecutors could easily add more counts.

In a phone call, Mr. Cacheris said only: “It’s not something that I want to discuss, so I have no comment.”

Mr. Snowden’s revelations about the breadth and intrusiveness of the N.S.A.’s surveillance prompted the first major reconsideration of the government’s surveillance powers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. President Obama has said he wants to stop the N.S.A.’s collection of every American’s phone records, a program that was the subject of the first news article based on Mr. Snowden’s documents. But Mr. Obama and other administration officials have said Mr. Snowden should return to the United States to face prosecution.

Mr. Snowden has said that he wants to live somewhere other than Russia, but that American diplomatic pressure is preventing him from traveling or obtaining asylum elsewhere. Still, as long as he can live indefinitely under asylum in Russia, he appears unlikely to strike a deal that would require a lengthy prison sentence.

“Snowden is interested in returning home,” said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who also represents Mr. Snowden. “He is and always has been on America’s side. He would cooperate in extraordinary ways in the right circumstances. But he does not believe that the ‘felon’ label is the right word for someone whose act of conscience has revitalized democratic oversight of the intelligence community and is leading to historic reforms.”

Prosecutors have signaled no interest in giving Mr. Snowden credit for the surveillance debate he started.

“He is accused of leaking classified information, and there is no question his actions have inflicted serious harms on our national security,” said Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesman. He said Mr. Snowden was not a whistle-blower.

Any deal could depend on what information Mr. Snowden could give in return.

In December, Richard Ledgett, who was then the National Security Agency official leading the response to the leaks and has since become the agency’s deputy director, floated the idea of a deal in which Mr. Snowden would receive leniency in exchange for returning documents in his possession that he had not disclosed.

“I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high,” he said. “It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”It is not clear whether Mr. Ledgett was suggesting an outcome in which Mr. Snowden persuaded journalists to destroy or return the documents, or whether the government believed Mr. Snowden had kept back documents to use as leverage.

Mr. Snowden has repeatedly said he did not bring any documents to Russia. He recently told Vanity Fair that there was no “doomsday cache” in his possession, saying, “Who would set up a system that incentivizes others to kill them?”

Even if he has no documents to return, Mr. Snowden could also help the N.S.A. by providing an accounting of what he took. Despite government claims that Mr. Snowden may have taken 1.7 million documents, Mr. Snowden also told Vanity Fair that figure is “a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.”

Mr. Ledgett confirmed to Vanity Fair that the N.S.A. did not know what he had taken.

Some leaks cases have ended with charges less than a felony, and Mr. Wizner’s remarks suggest that Mr. Snowden wants something similar. Thomas Drake, a former N.S.A. executive accused of leaking about waste and mismanagement to The Baltimore Sun, was charged under the Espionage Act with mishandling classified documents. He settled his case in 2011 for a misdemeanor guilty plea and served no prison time.

Several other leak cases under the Obama administration have resulted in deals for roughly two or three years in prison. At the far end of the spectrum, Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, who leaked documents to WikiLeaks, was sentenced by a military court last year to 35 years in prison.

Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and a Columbia University law professor, said the first step toward a deal is hiring someone like Mr. Cacheris — “a lawyer whom the government can trust and has familiarity with.”

Mr. Cacheris previously represented Mr. Franklin, a Pentagon analyst who was prosecuted under the administration of George W. Bush for leaking classified information about Iran to pro-Israel lobbyists, who in turn were accused of passing it to journalists.

Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty in 2005 and was initially sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison. In 2009, a judge reduced the sentence to 10 months of community confinement.

In 2001, Mr. Cacheris represented Mr. Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. He negotiated a plea deal for a life sentence, sparing Mr. Hanssen the death penalty and allowing his wife to collect part of his pension.

In 1994, Mr. Cacheris represented Mr. Ames, a Central Intelligence Agency officer charged with being a Russian agent. Mr. Cacheris negotiated a deal for a life sentence for Mr. Ames and a lighter sentence for Mr. Ames's wife for aiding his spying.

But Mr. Snowden’s negotiations will face steep hurdles, Mr. Richman said, because even if he can offer something, the government will want a punishment that deters future leakers.

“If there isn’t a deal,” Mr. Richman said, “it’s an unfortunate but relatively stable thing for him to be in Russia for the rest of his life with an American indictment standing against him.”


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10) Twelve Deportation Protesters Arrested at White House
By


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11) Disparate Forces Align Over Affordable Rents
By ELI ROSENBERG

The letter came in the dead of winter, dated Jan. 29. In a written “notice of termination,” Toussaint Wortham’s landlord accused him of violating his lease by making some renovations in his kitchen, and telling him that he had two weeks to leave the rent-stabilized apartment he had lived in for more than 30 years.

A few weeks later, Mr. Wortham said, his rent check was returned; his landlord had refused to accept it. Then, he said, the building’s manager offered to buy him out of the unit if he agreed to vacate for good. After he refused, he was served with court papers.

Mr. Wortham, 39, contends that the new set of cabinets he installed more than five years earlier was not the impetus for his landlord’s action. The real problem was his rent; at $859 a month, it is far less than what the three-bedroom apartment would command at market rate in his increasingly popular Brooklyn neighborhood. Rather than call a lawyer, Mr. Wortham turned to a group called the Crown Heights Tenant Union.

Founded by a handful of young Occupy Wall Street veterans last summer, the Crown Heights Tenant Union is one of the most effective groups at dealing with issues raised by the rapid gentrification of the neighborhood, just east of Prospect Park. It has organized tenants in some 20 buildings, to combat what the group says are patterns of abuse directed at residents like Mr. Wortham, who live in the area’s many rent-regulated apartments.

Struggles between tenants and landlords are nothing new, but this one has a twist: Fueled by the influx of a new generation of socially conscious recent college graduates, most of whom, unlike Mr. Wortham, have only lived in the neighborhood for a couple of years, the group is challenging the stereotypes that pit long-term residents against newer ones, which are often drawn along racial and class lines, in the struggle over gentrification.

“It’s pretty unique,” said Kerri White, an organizer with the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, which, along with the Pratt Area Community Council, is one of the seasoned advocacy groups that has joined forces with the Tenant Union. “Because the rate of gentrification in Crown Heights is happening so rapidly, it really does put the spectrum of tenants together.”

Crown Heights, the group’s organizers say, is a perfect storm of housing issues, where regulated apartments can rent for as little as half of what they could garner at market rates. According to advocates, the area has also been disproportionately affected by the return of what they call “predatory equity,” where private equity firms acquire buildings with a high percentage of rent-regulated units and a business plan to convert those units to market rate rentals.

The Tenant Union hopes that by organizing tenants, educating them about their rights and streamlining information about the city’s arcane housing laws, it will be able to help fend off landlords who aggressively, and at times, the group says, illegally, try to clear rent-stabilized units of their long-term residents.

The group’s position is that the harassment used to clear longstanding tenants from apartments to make way for more affluent young adults like themselves, who are often willing to pay much more for apartments, is a cycle of exploitation.Older residents get displaced from rent-stabilized apartments by landlords who harass them into buyouts, neglect to make repairs or stop accepting their rent checks, the group says. Landlords then might overcharge subsequent tenants by illegally inflating rent on what is still, in many cases, a rent-stabilized unit. According to the group’s logic, breaking this cycle would make life easier for the area’s longtime residents, while keeping rents lower for newcomers like themselves, many of whom are earning entry-level professional wages.

Some landlords in the area dispute the accounts of tenants in the union. A man who identified himself as Kenneth Rosenblum, one of the owners of Mr. Wortham’s building, acknowledged that he was currently in court with Mr. Wortham amid eviction proceedings. “He did something which was wrong. He has to take responsibility for his conduct,” said Mr. Rosenblum. “The court will be the one that makes that decision.”

Mr. Rosenblum rejected the notion that he would try to push out a rent-stabilized tenant. “We have these existing tenants who have asked us and we have put in new kitchens, new baths, whatever anyone wants,” he said. “We are there to be of service.”

Other groups have tried to organize in Crown Heights but have been less effective. The Crown Heights Assembly, for example, gained attention in 2013 for sticker-bombing buildings and loudly protesting against a local brokerage’s procedures. The brokerage responded by filing a $31 million lawsuit against the assembly.

Organizers say the Crown Heights Tenant Union has found success where the Crown Heights Assembly and Occupy Wall Street did not by focusing more on inclusion. “For whatever reason, this is really working,” said Nicole Carty, 25, a recent graduate of Brown University and a former facilitator with the Occupy movement, who helped found the group last summer.

The union has delivered a list of demands to various landlords in the area. Modeled on collective bargaining agreements, the list calls for, among other things, a five-year rent freeze, a right to timely repairs and an “an end to the cycle of displacement.” They say their message is taking root with some in their intended audience: the landlords of a building on Union Street where they held a small protest have started making more repairs to currently occupied apartments and stopped renovating vacant ones, according to organizers.

The rally on Union Street drew more than 50 neighborhood residents. Letitia James, the city’s public advocate, recently sent a staff member to meet with the group. They are also working closely with South Brooklyn Legal Services to help connect tenants to attorneys. The group’s organizers say they are reaching around 500 tenants, and that about 80 are regularly involved.

One of these is Heather Ifill, 62, who says her landlord won’t make timely repairs to the rent-stabilized one-bedroom she rents for about $800 a month. She claims it took more than two months for her bathroom ceiling to be fixed after a part of it collapsed last summer. Ms. Ifill, who learned of the group from a flyer posted in her St. Marks Avenue building, says she doesn’t think there’s anything hypocritical about the area’s new residents trying to help out its older ones.

“I’m glad that somebody is coming forward and trying to help the people in the area get through all of this,” she said.

She says she feels sympathy for some of them.

“If you come out here just starting out working, how can you pay the amount of money that they’re asking for?” she said. “Everybody deserves to live someplace. Everybody deserves to have a nice apartment.”

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12) One Execution Botched, Oklahoma Delays the Next
By

McALESTER, Okla. — What was supposed to be the first of two executions here on Tuesday night was halted when the prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, began to writhe and gasp after he had already been declared unconscious and called out “oh, man,” according to witnesses.

The administering doctor intervened and discovered that “the line had blown,” said the director of corrections, Robert Patton, meaning that drugs were no longer flowing into Mr. Lockett’s vein.

At 7:06 p.m., Mr. Patton said, Mr. Lockett died in the execution chamber, of a heart attack.

Mr. Patton said the governor had agreed to his request for a stay of 14 days in the second execution scheduled for Tuesday night, that of Charles F. Warner.

It was a chaotic and disastrous step in Oklahoma’s long effort to execute the two men, overcoming their objections that the state would not disclose the source of the drugs being used in a newly tried combination.According to Mr. Patton, it was the method of administration, not the drugs themselves, that failed, but it resulted in what witnesses called an agonizing scene.

“This was botched, and it was difficult to watch,” said David Autry, one of Mr. Lockett’s lawyers.

Dean Sanderford, another lawyer for Mr. Lockett, said, “It looked like torture.”

A medical technican inserted the IV needle and then the the first drug, a sedative intended to knock the man out and forestall pain, was administered at 6:23 p.m. Ten minutes later, the doctor announced that Mr. Lockett was unconscious, and the team started to administer the next two drugs, a paralytic and one intended to make the heart stop.

At that point, witnesses said, things began to go awry. Mr. Lockett’s body twitched, his foot shook and he mumbled, witnesses said.

At 6:37 p.m., he tried to rise and exhaled loudly. At that point, prison officials pulled a curtain in front of the witnesses and the doctor discovered a “vein failure,” Mr. Patton said.

Without effective sedation, the second two drugs are known to cause agonizing suffocation and pain.

Mr. Lockett’s apparent revival and writhing raised questions about the doctor’s initial declaration that he was unconscious and are sure to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the sedative used.

Gov. Mary Fallin said late Tuesday, “I have asked the Department of Corrections to conduct a full review of Oklahoma’s execution procedures to determine what happened and why during this evening’s execution of Clayton Derrell Lockett.”

Madeline Cohen, a federal public defender and lawyer for Mr. Warner, said that while prison officials asserted that the problem was only with the intravenous line, “unless we have a full and independent investigation, we’ll never know.”

“No execution should take place in Oklahoma until there has been a full investigation into Clayton Lockett’s death, including an independent autopsy and full transparency surrounding the drugs and the process of administering them,” she said.

The appeals for disclosure about the drug sources, supported by a state court in March, threw Oklahoma’s highest courts and elected officials into weeks of conflict and disarray, with courts arguing over which should consider the request for a politically unpopular stay of execution, the governor defying the State Supreme Court’s ruling for a delay, and a legislator seeking impeachment of the justices.The planned executions of Mr. Lockett, 38, and Mr. Warner, 46, dramatized the growing tension nationally over secrecy in lethal injections as drug companies, saying they are fearful of political and even physical attack, refuse to supply drugs, and many states scramble to find new sources and try untested combinations. Several states have imposed secrecy on the suppliers of lethal injection drugs, leading to court battles over due process and the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawyers for the two convicts said the lack of supplier information made it impossible to know if the drugs were safe and effective, or might possibly violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Officials swore that the drugs had been obtained legally from licensed pharmacies and had not expired. Ms. Fallin, expressing the view of many here, said earlier Tuesday, “Two men that do not contest their guilt in heinous murders will now face justice.”

But that sentiment was overshadowed by Tuesday night’s bungled execution, which is certain to generate more challenges to lethal injection, long considered the most humane of execution methods.

Mr. Lockett was convicted of shooting a 19-year-old woman in 1999 and burying her alive. Mr. Warner, condemned for the rape and murder of an 11-month-old girl in 1997, was to be executed two hours later.

The two men spent Tuesday in adjacent cells, visited by their lawyers and, in Mr. Warner’s case, family members. The hulking white penitentiary in this small town in southeast Oklahoma, amid prairies now green from soaking spring rains, is the prison from which Tom Joad is paroled in the opening pages of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

In keeping with the untried drug protocol announced by the Corrections Department this month, Mr. Lockett was first injected with midazolam, a benzodiazepine intended to render the prisoner unconscious. This was to be followed by injections of vecuronium bromide, a paralyzing agent that stops breathing, and then potassium chloride, which stops the heart.This combination has been used in Florida, but with a much higher dose of midazolam than Oklahoma used.

Faced with shortages, Oklahoma and other states have turned to compounding pharmacies — lightly regulated laboratories that mix up drugs to order. Opponents have raised questions about quality control, especially after the widely reported dying gasps of a convict in Ohio for more than 10 minutes, and an Oklahoma inmate’s utterance, “I feel my whole body burning,” after being injected with compounded drugs.

Oklahoma later said it had found a federally approved manufacturer to provide the drugs for Tuesday’s executions, but refused to identify it.

Oklahoma’s attorney general, Scott Pruitt, derided the lawsuits over drug secrecy, calling them delaying tactics. Many legal experts, especially death penalty opponents, say otherwise.

“Information on the drug that is intended to act as the anesthetic is crucial to ensure that the execution will be humane,” said Jennifer Moreno, a lawyer with the Berkeley Law School’s Death Penalty Clinic.

Elsewhere, Texas has refused to reveal where it obtained a new batch of compounded drugs; a challenge is before the State Supreme Court. Georgia passed a law last year making information about lethal drug suppliers a “confidential state secret”; a challenge is also pending in that state’s top court.

This month, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear suits attacking drug secrecy in Missouri and Louisiana.

But three of the justices expressed interest, and the issue seems likely to be considered by the Supreme Court at some point, said Eric M. Freedman, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University.

In March, it appeared that Mr. Lockett and Mr. Warner had won the right to know more about the drugs when an Oklahoma judge ruled that the secrecy law was unconstitutional. But the judge said she did not have the authority to grant the men stays of execution, sending the inmates into a Kafkaesque legal maze.

The state’s Court of Criminal Appeals repeatedly turned back the Supreme Court’s order to rule on a stay, while the attorney general insisted that the executions would go ahead.

On April 21, the Supreme Court said that to avoid a miscarriage of justice, it would delay the executions until it had time to resolve the secrecy matter.

The next day, Ms. Fallin, a Republican, said the Supreme Court had overstepped its powers, and she directed officials to carry out both executions on April 29. An outraged legislator, Representative Mike Christian, said he would seek to impeach the justices, who were already under fire from conservative legislators for striking down laws the court deemed unconstitutional.

A constitutional crisis appeared to be brewing. But last Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced a decision on the secrecy issue — overturning the lower court and declaring that the executions could proceed.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed from New York.


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13) Nearly Half of New Yorkers Are Struggling to Get By, Study Finds
By

New York City’s share of poor people appears to have plateaued since the recession, at 21.4 percent, with more people working in 2012 than the year before, but at lower wages, according to a new city study. Contributing to the city’s economic problems were increases in the number of Asian-Americans, immigrants and residents of Queens slipping into poverty.

But under a broader definition of poverty that the city applies, the picture remains grim for a far larger number of New Yorkers.

As in 2011, 46 percent, or nearly half of New Yorkers, were making less than 150 percent of the poverty threshold, a figure that describes people who are struggling to get by.

Even with fewer people unemployed, the poverty rate for working-age adults working full time reached 8 percent, by the city’s measure. Fully 17 percent of families with a full-time worker lived in poverty, and even among families with two full-time workers, the rate was 5.2 percent.

The latest numbers, compiled by the city’s Center for Economic Opportunity, were presented to the City Council on Tuesday and are to provide a base line for how well Mayor Bill de Blasio addresses a signature issue.

“This is an administration that got elected almost entirely on this question,” said Anthony E. Shorris, the first deputy mayor.

“After years of trying to nibble around the edges with pilot programs that were well-intentioned, but that were not moving the needle,” he said, the de Blasio administration would confront “this stubborn undercurrent” full throttle through paid sick leave, expansion of the so-called living wage law, municipal identification cards, universal prekindergarten and after-school programs.

“Everything we’re trying to do is at scale,” he said.

The report concluded that “the recession-related growth in the poverty rate, which began in 2008, has ended.”

Still, some groups, some of them overlapping, plunged deeper into poverty. Since 2008, when the city initiated its more comprehensive poverty index, Asians overtook Hispanics as the poorest New Yorkers. In 2008, they were statistically identical at about 23 percent. By 2012, the rate among Asians was 3.3 percentage points higher than the rate for Hispanics, at 29 percent.

Under the less exacting federal standard, a family of two adults and two children was defined as poor in 2012 if it made less than $23,283, yielding a poverty rate of 20 percent in the city. But under the city’s definition, which takes into account benefits like food stamps and expenses like higher living costs, the income threshold was $31,039, resulting in a rate of 21.4 percent.

A smaller proportion of people (5.4 percent) were living in extreme poverty — below 50 percent of the poverty rate — by the city’s standard than under the federal standard (8.1 percent).

While more people were working, wages were lagging because most jobs were generated in lower-wage hospitality and retail fields.

Brooklyn was the only borough to register a decline in its poverty rate between 2011 and 2012.

Compared with the federal measure, the city showed lower poverty rates among people under 18 and higher rates among those 65 and older. The city’s measure, according to Christine D’Onofrio, the lead researcher, also demonstrated the effects of housing subsidies, an earned-income tax credit and food stamps in keeping people out of poverty and the high cost of medical care in swelling the ranks of the poor.But the most striking detail remained the 46 percent at or near poverty, the same rate found in a report last year that was prepared by Dr. Mark K. Levitan when his son, Dan, was, coincidentally, Mr. de Blasio’s communications director. Dr. Levitan was the Center for Economic Opportunity’s director of poverty research before retiring.

The report outlined the de Blasio administration’s agenda for mitigating poverty: municipal identification cards to provide immigrants with access to basic services and other supports, raising the local minimum wage, protecting low-wage workers, giving preferential treatment to city residents in public works jobs, raising wages at companies doing business with or receiving subsidies from the city, and more school services that also allow parents to work.

Poverty will never be eliminated, said Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the deputy mayor for health and human services. “There will always be relative poverty, but it’s not acceptable when people are mired in abject poverty,” she said.

“Obviously,” Mr. Shorris said, “poverty is reflective of larger national and global phenomena.”

“We’re not unrealistic about what a city can do,” he added. “But after four years, we’ll be asking whether our interventions were effective in changing what would have been the course of poverty in New York. What would the city have looked like had we not made those interventions?”

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14) In the U.S., Punishment Comes Before the Crimes
By Eduardo Porter

Few things are better at conveying what a nation really cares than how it spends its money. On that measure, Americans like to punish.

The United States spent about $80 billion on its system of jails and prisons in 2010 — about $260 for every resident of the nation. By contrast, its budget for food stamps was $227 a person.

In 2012, 2.2 million Americans were in jail or prison, a larger share of the population than in any other country; and that is about five times the average for fellow industrialized nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The nation’s unique strategy on crime underscores the distinct path followed by American social and economic institutions compared with the rest of the industrialized world.

Scholars don’t have a great handle on why crime fighting in the United States veered so decidedly toward mass incarceration. But the pivotal moment seems to have occurred four decades ago.

In 1974, the criminologist Robert Martinson published “What Works? Questions and Answers About Prison Reform.” Efforts at rehabilitation, it concluded, were a waste of time.

“With few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism,” he wrote. Standard rehabilitation strategies, he suggested, “cannot overcome, or even appreciably reduce, the powerful tendency for offenders to continue in criminal behavior.”

Crime was rising in the 1960s and 1970s, alarming the public and increasing the risk to politicians of appearing “soft” on crime.

The decline in manufacturing employment, once the backbone of many urban economies, wasn’t helping. Later, in the 1980s and ’90s, crack cocaine became a scourge of the nation’s inner cities.

But as Steven Raphael of the University of California, Berkeley, and Michael A. Stoll of the University of California, Los Angeles, note in their book “Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?,” what drove up imprisonment rates was not crime but policy.

If rehabilitation was out of reach, the thinking went, all that was left was to remove criminals from society and, through harsh sentencing, deter future crime. From 1975 through 2002, all 50 states adopted mandatory sentencing laws, specifying minimum sentences. Many also adopted “three strikes” laws to punish recidivists. Judges lost the power to offer shorter sentences.

And the prison population surged. Four decades ago, the correctional population in the United States was not that dissimilar from the rest of the developed world. Less than 0.2 percent of the American population was in a correctional institution. By 2012, however, the share of Americans behind bars of one sort or another had more than tripled to 0.7 percent.

Bruce Western of Harvard suggests a specific American motivation, which sprang to some degree from the victories of the civil rights movement.

“The crime debate was racialized to an important degree,” Professor Western told me. “The anxieties white voters felt were not just about crime but about fundamental social changes going on in American society.”

Today, a little under half the state and federal prison population is black. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that a black boy born in 2001 had a 32.2 percent chance of doing time behind bars.

Growing inequality, too, appears to have played a role. As Devah Pager of Harvard told me: “There is something to the idea that the more distant the rich become to the poor, the easier it is to impose policies that are more punitive than others.”Professor Raphael is wary of linking incarceration with income dynamics. Still, he agrees the trends are suspiciously similar. “In the 1970s, something changes,” he told me. “The increasing concentration of income at the top follows the incarceration rate almost perfectly.”

The United States had another singularity: a comparatively small welfare state that struggled to address social and economic dislocation. “The criminal justice system became the only effective institution that could bring order and manage urban communities,” Professor Pager said.

Prison, according to Professor Western, “became a last resort for a whole variety of social failures.” Whether it is caused by problems with mental health, drug abuse or unemployment, he said, “all the people that slip through the safety net and end up in crime end up in the prison system.”

What did we get from this? Crime rates have fallen by almost half since 1990, to the lowest level since the early 1970s. But that may have little to do with mass incarceration. Demographic trends — there are simply fewer young men around — help explain much of the decline. Some states, like New York, have managed to reduce crime even while cutting the prison population through better policing.

The United States still suffers higher rates of violent crimes than European countries that have lighter sentencing policies. In 2012, the United States had five intentional homicides for each 100,000 people. In Canada, the rate was 1.8. In Australia, 1.2. Mass imprisonment not only suffers from diminishing returns. After a certain point, it might actually increase crime.

Indeed, a growing body of research has concluded that the costs of the strategy are much steeper than prisoners’ room and board.

Anna Aizer of Brown University and Joseph J. Doyle Jr. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that putting a minor in juvenile detention reduced his likelihood of graduating from high school by 13 percentage points and increased his odds of being incarcerated as an adult by 23 percentage points.

The impact of incarceration on a former inmate’s future life is difficult to disentangle. Still, a report by Mr. Western and Becky Pettit of the University of Washington suggested that serving time reduced men’s hourly wage by 11 percent and annual employment by nine weeks.

More than half of inmates have minor children. Their children are almost six times as likely to be expelled or suspended from school. Family incomes fall 22 percent during the years fathers are incarcerated.

On Wednesday, the National Academy of Sciences is unveiling a report on the causes and consequences of American mass incarceration. On Thursday, the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project will present its evaluation, alongside an analysis by Mr. Raphael and Mr. Stoll, which suggests that less imprisonment might not produce more crime.

California — which had to release tens of thousands of prisoners in 2011 and 2012 to reduce prison crowding — offers a perspective into what life might be with a more lenient approach.

According to calculations by Professors Raphael and Stoll, there were 1.2 more auto thefts for every prison year not served. Violent crime wasn’t affected at all.

Extrapolating to a national scale, they estimated that reducing the imprisonment rate by 20 percent would lead to 121 new property crimes for every 100,000 Americans, a 5 percent increase over 2012.

This is a price American voters, and their elected officials, might be willing to pay — especially if they can save money on prisons.

Even Southern states that traditionally locked up criminals for as long as possible, like Georgia and Kentucky, have begun to experiment with cheaper, less punitive alternatives.

In Washington, a bipartisan group of senators — as varied as the Texas Republican Ted Cruz on the right to Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, on the left — are supporting a bill to lighten sentences for low-risk drug offenders.

These changes could turn around the imprisonment juggernaut. After rising relentlessly for three decades, the nation’s incarceration rate hit a peak in 2008 and started gradually to decline. In 2011 and 2012, the total correctional population actually shrank slightly.

We might spend the savings on food stamps.




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15) Changed Life of the Poor: Better Off, but Far Behind
By
WASHINGTON — Is a family with a car in the driveway, a flat-screen television and a computer with an Internet connection poor?

Americans — even many of the poorest — enjoy a level of material abundance unthinkable just a generation or two ago. That indisputable economic fact has become a subject of bitter political debate this year, half a century after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty.

Starkly different views on poverty and inequality rose to the fore again on Wednesday as Democrats in the Senate were unable to muster the supermajority of 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster of a proposal to raise the incomes of the working poor by lifting the national minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

House Republicans, led by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, have convened a series of hearings on poverty, including one on Wednesday, in some cases arguing that hundreds of billions of dollars of government spending a year may have made poverty easier or more comfortable but has done little to significantly limit its reach.

Indeed, despite improved living standards, the poor have fallen further behind the middle class and the affluent in both income and consumption. The same global economic trends that have helped drive down the price of most goods also have limited the well-paying industrial jobs once available to a huge swath of working Americans. And the cost of many services crucial to escaping poverty — including education, health care and child care — has soared.

“Without a doubt, the poor are far better off than they were at the dawn of the War on Poverty,” said James Ziliak, director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research. “But they have also drifted further away.”

Democrats have generally argued that addressing this disjunction requires providing more support for the poor, raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance benefits and making health care more affordable by expanding the reach of Medicaid and subsidizing private insurance for those who lack employer coverage.

Republicans, by contrast, have proposed reducing government regulations and overhauling existing programs to encourage more work, arguing that would allow Washington to decrease spending on the poor.

“The question isn’t whether the federal government should help; the question is how,” Mr. Ryan said at the hearing on Wednesday. “How do we make sure that every single taxpayer dollar we spend to reduce poverty is actually working?”

For many working poor families, the most apt description of their finances and lifestyle might be fragile. Even with a steady paycheck, keeping the bills paid becomes a high-wire act and saving an impossibility.

Tammie Hagen-Noey, a 49-year-old living in Richmond, Va., tapped at an iPhone as she sat on the porch of the group home where she lives — its proprietor is a friend of her daughter’s. She earns $7.25 an hour at a local McDonald’s, and makes a little extra money on the side from planting small plots of land for neighbors who want to garden.

Ms. Hagen-Noey is trying to rebuild her finances, which have been decimated by divorce, government liens and addiction. At the top of her list of priorities is finding better-paid work. She produced a paycheck that showed her earnings so far this year: $2,938.51.

“It’s impossible,” she said. “Every cent of that goes towards what I need.” A few months ago, she sold her car for $500 to make rent.

Two broad trends account for much of the change in poor families’ consumption over the past generation: federal programs and falling prices.

Since the 1960s, both Republican and Democratic administrations have expanded programs like food stamps and the earned-income tax credit. In 1967, government programs reduced one major poverty rate by about 1 percentage point. In 2012, they reduced the rate by nearly 13 percentage points.

As a result, the differences in what poor and middle-class families consume on a day-to-day basis are much smaller than the differences in what they earn.

“There’s just a whole lot more assistance per low-income person than there ever has been,” said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That is propping up the living standards to a considerable degree,” he said, citing a number of statistics on housing, nutrition and other categories.

Decades of economic growth, however, have been less successful in raising the incomes from work of many poor families, prompting a strong conservative critique this year that hundreds of billions of dollars in antipoverty programs have failed to make the poor less dependent on government.

“That’s the crux of the problem,” Mr. Rector added. “What sort of progress is that?”

But another form of progress has led to what some economists call the “Walmart effect”: falling prices for a huge array of manufactured goods.

Since the 1980s, for instance, the real price of a midrange color television has plummeted about tenfold, and televisions today are crisper, bigger, lighter and often Internet-connected. Similarly, the effective price of clothing, bicycles, small appliances, processed foods — virtually anything produced in a factory — has followed a downward trajectory. The result is that Americans can buy much more stuff at bargain prices.

Many crucial services, though, remain out of reach for poor families. The costs of a college education and health care have soared. Ms. Hagen-Noey, for instance, does not treat her hepatitis and other medical problems, as she does not qualify for Medicaid and cannot pay for her own insurance or care.Child care also remains only a small sliver of the consumption of poor families because it is simply too expensive. In many cases, it depresses the earnings of women who have no choice but to give up hours working to stay at home.

“The average annual cost for infant care in the U.S. is $6,000 or $7,000 a year,” said Professor Ziliak of the University of Kentucky. “When you look at the average income of many single mothers, that is going to end up being a quarter of it. That’s huge. That is just out of reach for many folks.”

Tiffany Beroid, a 29-year-old mother who works at a Walmart in Laurel, Md., said she works part time, rather than full time, because she and her husband could not otherwise afford child care. Their incomes already suffered when her doctors told her to stay off her feet during the late stages of her pregnancy, and she said Walmart would not accommodate her with a desk job.

“Child care was costing probably $350 a week,” said Ms. Beroid, who makes $10.70 an hour. “I would love to be in full-time work, if I could make enough to cover child care payments.”

And many poor families barely make it from paycheck to paycheck. For evidence, economists point to the fact that children living in families with food stamps eat more calories at the beginning of the month than the end of it.Economists pointed out that many low-income families struggled to use even the assets they had: keeping gas in the car, paying for cable and keeping the electricity on. Many families rely on expensive credit. And even if those families sold their assets, often it would only provide them with a small buffer, too.

Anthony Goytia, who works the night shift at a Walmart in Southern California, is reliant on payday loans to pay his bills.

“Some of our bills come in at the middle of the month,” said Mr. Goytia, a father of four who makes about $16,000 a year. “Then we’ve got to pay our rent by the first, and when we don’t have the money, we have to take out a payday loan.”

Bobby Bingham, 38, of Kansas City, Mo., works three part-time jobs seven days a week to make ends meet, but struggles to cover basic living expenses: his apartment, his car, his car insurance, gas and utilities. He is also heavily in debt, owing $30,000 in student loans and about $12,000 in credit-card debt with an annual interest rate of 17 percent.

“It’s hard on my psyche,” he said. “There’s no break. There’s no time to breathe. I always have to think about the next step just to survive. It’s not like I can look forward and plan, because I’m just trying to think about tomorrow.”

In the end, many mainstream economists argue, the lives of the poor must be looked at in light of the nation’s overall wealth and economic advancement.

“If you handpick services and goods where there has been dramatic technological progress, then the fact that poor people can consume these items in 2014 and even rich people couldn’t consume them in 1954 is hardly a meaningful distinction,” said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “That’s not telling you who is rich and who is poor, not in the way that Adam Smith and most everyone else since him thinks about poverty.”

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16) State-Sponsored Horror in Oklahoma
"There is growing evidence that capital sentences are handed out in an arbitrary and racially biased way, often to innocent victims. A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that more than 4 percent of all death-row defendants are innocent."
By

At 6:36 p.m. on Tuesday in McAlester, Okla., Clayton Lockett started kicking his leg, then twitching, then writhing and moaning in agony, and everyone watching knew something had gone terribly wrong. Mr. Lockett, a convicted murderer, was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, about to be executed by lethal injection, but the untested combination of a sedative and a paralyzing agent had failed.

According to an eyewitness account by a reporter for The Tulsa World, Mr. Lockett tried to raise himself up, mumbled the word “man,” and was in obvious pain. Officials hastily closed the blinds on the chamber and told reporters that the execution had been stopped because of a “vein failure.” But at 7:06, the inmate was pronounced dead of a heart attack.

This horrific scene — the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment — should never have happened. The Oklahoma Supreme Court tried to stop it last week, concerned that the state refused to reveal the origin of the deadly cocktail. But several lawmakers threatened to impeach the justices, and Gov. Mary Fallin blindly ignored the warning signs and ordered the execution to proceed. (She said it was outside the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which normally deals with civil matters.)

On Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after her employees tortured a man to death, Ms. Fallin suddenly showed an interest in execution procedures. She ordered an independent review of the injection protocol, halting further state killings until the investigation is complete.

She should have gone much further and followed other governors and legislatures in banning executions, recognizing that the American administration of death does not function. Mr. Lockett’s ordeal, along with the botched deaths of other inmates around the country, showed there is no reliable and humane method of execution. As Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon said in 2011: “I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am governor.”

Seven states have put the death penalty on hold over the last five years because of issues of fairness or methods; another 11 states are debating the issue. Even in states where the death penalty is applied, the number of executions has fallen sharply since 2009. Republicans in Oklahoma seemed so eager to buck this tide that they ignored what happened during a January execution, when an inmate named Michael Lee Wilson said “I feel my whole body burning” just before the drugs killed him.

Many drug companies, fearful of political attack, have stopped supplying the means of execution, and states determined to inflict the maximum punishment have turned to questionable sources like compounding pharmacies for lethal chemicals. Oklahoma, among other states, won’t say where it is getting the drugs, leading one state judge to say “I do not think this is even a close call” that the execution procedures are unconstitutional.The medieval mechanics of death, though, are hardly the only reason that states are abandoning the practice. There is growing evidence that capital sentences are handed out in an arbitrary and racially biased way, often to innocent victims. A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that more than 4 percent of all death-row defendants are innocent.

The authors reached that figure by extrapolating from the growing number of exonerations of death-row inmates. They accused Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of miscalculating when he wrote in 2007 that convictions in American courts have only a 0.027 percent error rate. “That would be comforting, if true,” the study says. “In fact, the claim is silly.” Even more disturbing, the report says, is the stark reality for innocent people sentenced to death: most will never be exonerated.

Jurists and lawmakers are increasingly aware that an immediate moratorium on death is the only civilized response to this arbitrary cruelty. As Wallace Carson Jr., the former chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, put it recently, “the exceptional cost of death penalty cases and the seemingly haphazard selection of which cases deserve the death penalty outweigh any perceived public benefit of this sanction.”

The “exceptional cost” refers not just to dollars and cents. It refers to the moral diminishment of the United States when a man dies by the hasty hand of government, writhing in pain.

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17) Three Mile Island, and Nuclear Hopes and Fears
By

There is a certain irony in the shorthand that experts commonly use when discussing this country’s closest brush with nuclear cataclysm: TMI. Today, those letters are widely understood to mean “too much information.” But well before the advent of social media, TMI referred principally to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, a power plant on the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania. Disaster struck there in 1979, and when it did, too much information — solid, unassailable information — was not part of the mix. Months later, a presidential commission cited a “lack of communication at all levels” as cause for grave concern. Americans were frightened, and not just those in Pennsylvania. Fear was intensified because, as the commission said, their right to know what was going on had been sorely compromised.

Then again, so many things went wrong on the Susquehanna back in 1979. Disaster struck at 4 a.m. on March 28 when water-coolant pumps failed at the plant’s new second reactor, known as TMI-2. That led to the reactor’s overheating, with the temperature rising steadily after a stuck valve misled the operators into halting the flow of emergency cooling water. Half the core was later found to have melted.

Details of the accident are recounted in the latest offering from Retro Report, a weekly series of video documentaries examining major news stories from the past and their lessons for today. In a nutshell, TMI-2 lurched through a series of crises for nearly a week. The presidential panel later found plenty of blame to go around. The plant’s designer, Babcock & Wilcox; the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the local utility, Metropolitan Edison; TMI-2 managers and workers; and the news media collectively — none were spared in a report carrying the subtitle “Need to Change.”

The worst of it fell on March 30, when radiation was purposefully released into the air to relieve pressure within the system. That action fed apprehension beyond the plant’s concrete walls that the situation had spun out of control. Rumors flew. So did thoughts of a possible mass evacuation. Pennsylvania’s governor, Richard L. Thornburgh, was loath to go that far, but he did advise pregnant women and small children near the island to find more distant shelter. Contributing to the pervasive dread was a film that had just come out, “The China Syndrome,” a thriller about a safety crisis at a nuclear power plant in California. (“China syndrome” in the nuclear industry’s argot describes a meltdown so severe that the material might burrow clear to the other side of the world, to China.) During the crisis, some moviegoers emerged from theaters to see scary newspaper headlines about an unsettling scenario in Pennsylvania evocative of the on-screen terror they had just witnessed.

No China syndrome took place at TMI. Nor were there immediate deaths or injuries. As for long-term physical health effects, the thrust of most studies — though by no means all — is that the disaster’s impact was negligible.The psychological toll, however, was immense. Even before the accident, America’s romance with nuclear power had begun to chill. Three Mile Island sent it into the deep freeze. Many years passed before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission got a chance to review an application to build a new power plant. The devastating 1986 Chernobyl nightmare in Ukraine, the worst catastrophe at a nuclear power plant, hardly reassured wary people, even those willing to chalk up that horror to useless Soviet engineering and management. Now we have the continuing ordeal of the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan, crippled by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Small wonder that strong antinuclear sentiments are expressed, like those in Mother Jones on the heels of the tsunami, to the effect that “replacing coal and oil with nuclear power is like trading heroin for crack — different addictions, but no less unhealthy or risky.”

Yet American attitudes on nuclear power, as measured by opinion polls, are far from irrevocably negative. As TMI faded in collective memory, the popularity of that energy source has waxed and waned, each rise tempered by a new cause for alarm, notably Chernobyl and Fukushima. Many power plants that had been on the drawing boards before 1979 were built. In the last few years, new ones have been proposed, encouraged by President Obama, who has described nuclear energy as necessary — along with renewable sources like wind and solar — in any plan to wean the country from fossil fuels. The need for swift action would seem greater than ever, given new warnings from a United Nations panel that time is running short for countries to adopt strategies to keep worldwide carbon emissions from reaching intolerable levels.It is hard to grasp how American reliance on nuclear energy could disappear soon, if ever. According to the World Nuclear Association, a London-based group that promotes nuclear power, there are 104 nuclear reactors in the United States. They accounted in 2011 for 19 percent of this country’s total electricity output. While that is half of what coal-fired power plants generated, and roughly 60 percent of that produced by plants relying on natural gas, it is still a lot. Projections suggest that America’s energy needs will only keep growing.

Still, nuclear power scares the pants off people unlike any other energy form. The phenomenon is hardly new. Baby boomers grew up with a stream of 1950s horror movies like “Godzilla” and “The Amazing Colossal Man,” premised on radiation’s monstrous consequences. Fast forward to Chernobyl, whose psychological impact was reflected in a 2005 study conducted under the aegis of several international groups, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. This review concluded that “the mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date.” A year after Fukushima, Spencer Weart, a physicist and science historian, wrote for this newspaper’s Dot Earth blog that nuclear fear retained “its status as the supreme horror,” a psychological malaise that “does not accompany other materials that put people at risk of cancer and other deadly illness.”

Could the events at Three Mile Island happen again? Not very likely, at least not at Three Mile Island itself. TMI-2 was permanently shut down, and TMI-1, the first reactor there, would seem not long for this world; it is expected to be decommissioned, a process that was supposed to begin this year but has been delayed until 2034.

But is that enough to allay all nuclear fears in this country? Many TMI-era reactors are still around. So it is perhaps not TMI, the modern TMI, to suggest that the probable answer is no.

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 18) Protesters Defy Government Ban on May Day Demonstrations in Turkey
By SEBNEM ARSU and CEYLAN YEGINSU

ISTANBUL — Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Istanbul on Thursday in May Day rallies, lashing out against a government mired in a corruption scandal and accused of creeping authoritarianism.

The police fired tear gas, used water cannons and shut down main streets to disperse hundreds of protesters seeking to defy a government ban on May Day celebrations in Taksim Square, also the scene of antigovernment protests last summer against the administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The protesters had gathered to observe May Day, which historically has been a lightning rod for violence in Turkey as people have used the occasion to convey their grievances. May 1 was declared a national holiday in 2009.

May Day demonstrations also took place in parts of Asia, including Hong Kong and Seoul, where anger following a recent ferry sinking in South Korea was expected to give the protests particular resonance. Russian workers were also expected to gather in Red Square in Moscow in a show of the patriotism that has surged following events in Ukraine.

In Turkey, anger against Mr. Erdogan has grown in recent months as a corruption scandal has plunged his government into crisis and challenged the position of the prime minister, who has held power for more than a decade. In recent weeks, Mr. Erdogan has infuriated the country’s secular, liberal class by banning Twitter and clamping down on social media. Critics have also accused him of abusing his power by purging police officials and judges in an apparent attempt to undermine a corruption investigation that has ensnared him and several key allies.

The protests, to mark International Workers’ Day, followed mass demonstrations across Turkey last June, when tens of thousands of people demonstrated against Mr. Erdogan’s government.

To quell the latest protests, nearly 40,000 police were mobilized in Istanbul, according to law enforcement officials, and the government shut down bus and ferry lines and blocked roads leading to Taksim Square. But several unions and civic groups defied the restrictions on Thursday, claiming the ban was illegal.

Several protesters were detained in at least two Istanbul neighborhoods, the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency reported.

Hurriyet, a leading newspaper, reported that a man intent on joining the May Day protests had tried to hijack an airplane going from Nicosia, Cyprus, to Ankara on Thursday, locking himself in the plane’s bathroom and threatening to detonate a bomb if the flight wasn’t diverted to Istanbul. The newspaper said the flight landed in Ankara, where the suspected hijacker, a 50-year-old man, was arrested by the police.

In central Istanbul, protesters built barricades on small streets leading into Taksim Square and used slingshots to launch stones at the police, who responded with tear gas and periodic water-cannon fire from armored antiriot vehicles. Young men wearing gas masks and hard hats responded by throwing tear gas canisters back at the police lines, chanting “resistance!”

By midmorning, protesters, including the elderly and women, were struggling to cope with smoke billowing in the air. Some demonstrators used gas masks, surgical masks and construction goggles to protect themselves against the measures employed by the security forces, who have been criticized for what has been called a disproportionate use of tear gas and water cannons against protesters since last summer.“This is fascism, this is Erdogan’s obsession about power, nothing else,” said Funda Keles, director of a medical workers’ labor group, as she treated protesters.

Union members called on demonstrators to form a human wall to push through the police forces. “Everywhere Taksim, everywhere May 1,” they chanted as they marched toward the police lines. “Today our mission is to get to the square. If we run from the gas then we’ll never get there and we would have come here for nothing,” said Can Savas, 24, a student.

“We insist because it is our legal right to demonstrate and there is no reasonable explanation or legal pretext about this restriction,” said Umut Karatepe, a spokesman for the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, which is leading the labor unions that are seeking to stage the protest in Taksim.

Taksim Square carries important resonance in Turkey as a place of protest. In 1977, at least 35 people were killed in May Day celebrations when gunmen opened fire at protesters. In 1980, the military government declared May Day celebrations illegal in the square. In 2010, Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party reopened the square for celebrations, but then closed it last year during May Day, citing construction and safety concerns.

The initial spur for the demonstrations in June 2013 was a plan to replace a well-loved park near Taksim Square with an Ottoman-style army barracks. But the protests also reflected widespread disenchantment with the perceived authoritarianism of the government, which nevertheless remains popular with its core conservative constituency.
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19) Outrage Across Ideological Spectrum in Europe Over Flawed Lethal Injection in U.S.
"A Twitter message by someone who pretends to be God somehow caught the European mood. From @TheTweetOfGod: 'How could Oklahoma botch an execution? If there’s one thing I would expect Americans to know how to do by now, it’s kill somebody.'”
By

LONDON — Europeans largely consider the death penalty a particularly brutal American anachronism, but the prolonged death of Clayton D. Lockett in Oklahoma, after a botched execution by lethal injection, produced more than the usual horror on Wednesday.

The death penalty is banned in the European Union, which has also moved to ban the export of sedatives like sodium thiopental for use in lethal injections. The drug’s producer has stopped making it, and other European companies have sought to prevent their drugs from being used for executions, fearing European Union sanctions. As a result, the authorities in Oklahoma, and officials in other states, have been improvising new mixtures of drugs.According to the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, based in Switzerland, Belarus is the only European country that still carries out legal executions, usually by a gunshot to the head. But for some Europeans on Wednesday, even that method of killing seemed humane compared with what Mr. Lockett suffered until his heart stopped, about 43 minutes after the process began. Many here agreed with Madeline Cohen, a lawyer who witnessed the execution, who said that Mr. Lockett had been “tortured to death.”


Robert Badinter, a former minister of justice who was instrumental in banning the death penalty in France in 1981, denounced “methods that are even more barbaric than ordinary barbarism.”

Both Britain and France issued official statements condemning the execution in Oklahoma and urging the abolition of the death penalty. The British Foreign Office said it opposed the death penalty “in all circumstances as a matter of principle,” asserting that “its use undermines human dignity” and that “there is no conclusive evidence of its deterrent value.” France urged Oklahoma “to establish a moratorium with a view to abolishing this punishment, as many other states in the United States have done,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Vincent Floréani.

The criticism spanned Europe’s ideological divide, outraging conservatives and liberals. Alice Arnold, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, a right-leaning newspaper in Britain, wrote that “America is missing the point,” which is about “the very concept of killing in cold blood” and not about the method.

“I am proud to be British today, proud that I live in a country where this barbarism does not exist, but we must remember this atrocity occurred not in some far-off, third-world dictatorship,” Ms. Arnold wrote. “It happened in America, land of the free.”

Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, a member of Spain’s Parliament from the governing, conservative Popular Party, said that “botched or not, unnecessarily gruesome or technically flawless, executions are unacceptable.”

Mario Marazziti, who coordinates a global campaign for a moratorium on the death penalty for the Sant’Egidio Community of lay Roman Catholics, called lethal injection “unusually cruel and inhuman.” Despite the claims, he said, “it is never a ‘clean’ procedure,” but it represents what he termed “the moral and scientific bankruptcy of ‘clean’ capital punishment.”

Sant’Egidio has worked with Reprieve, a British organization, to block the sale of sedatives crucial in past executions. Mr. Marazziti conceded that some of the problems in Oklahoma, which was trying an untested drug protocol, stemmed from the difficulty of obtaining the now-unavailable sedatives.Maya Foa of Reprieve said that “states need to stop conducting secretive, experimental executions,” which were inhumane. “It is also a clear demonstration of why no responsible pharmaceutical firm or pharmacy wants to get involved in selling drugs to executioners. How many more of these horrifying events will it take before the authorities in Oklahoma and elsewhere get the message?”

Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords and a member of the European Parliament, has been pressing European drug companies not to supply executioners in the United States. “As a very sincere friend, I think this is unworthy of the United States of America,” she said. “The response to the E.U. ban on the export of certain drugs for execution should not be to scrape the moral barrel.”

Javier Garvich, making a comment on the Spanish website of El País, wrote that “if this happened in Cuba or North Korea, the United Nations would seek international sanctions.”

On the BBC website alone, there were more than 1,100 comments on the Oklahoma story. Many expressed sympathy for the young woman Mr. Lockett was convicted of shooting and burying alive. S. F. Higgins wrote, “Was there anything humane about the way Stephanie Neiman died?”

Still, there was puzzlement about why the execution went so badly. Lisa Carmina wrote, “From what they have been prosecuted for it is arguable that the death penalty is fitting, however everyone should be able to die with dignity and this does not seem like the case.”

A Twitter message by someone who pretends to be God somehow caught the European mood. From @TheTweetOfGod: “How could Oklahoma botch an execution? If there’s one thing I would expect Americans to know how to do by now, it’s kill somebody.”


Reporting was contributed by Stephen Castle and Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura from London, Maïa de la Baume from Paris, Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome, and Heather Murphy from New York.



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20) Hundreds in Albuquerque Voice Distrust of the Police
By

ALBUQUERQUE — For the third consecutive day Wednesday, Justice Department officials sat in rooms big and small here listening to disgruntled people pour out their frustrations about the Albuquerque Police Department, which was castigated in a Justice Department report in April for systemic and unconstitutional use of excessive force.

The sessions were as unusual as they were cathartic: This was the first time the Justice Department had issued an open invitation for comments in a city where it had intervened over police misconduct. More often, in cities where the agency has found fault — including, recently, New Orleans, Portland, Ore., and Seattle — only civic leaders and other central constituents have been consulted about remedies.In Albuquerque, hundreds of people turned out in March for a demonstration after a video was released showing the fatal shooting of a distraught homeless man by police officers. The event grew so heated that the police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

By contrast, the Justice Department meetings this week were largely polite: Hundreds of people showed up to voice their distrust of the police, suspicions of the union that represents officers, and disdain for Mayor Richard J. Berry, a Republican whose four-and-a-half-year tenure has been marked by the shooting deaths of 24 people by the police.

“What a lot of us would like to know is if the police and the mayor are going to be held accountable for past injustices, or is it all going to be swept under the rug?” Charles Zdravesky, 70, asked Damon P. Martinez, the acting United States attorney for New Mexico, during Monday’s meeting in a community center in the city’s working-class southwestern quadrant.

“Nothing is going to happen if you leave it up to the city,” interjected Mike Gomez, whose 22-year-old son, Alan, was fatally shot in 2011 by a police officer who mistook a spoon he was holding for a gun. “The city has had a chance for years, and it hasn’t done anything.”

Mr. Berry has called the video of the shooting of the homeless man, captured by an officer’s helmet camera, a “game changer.” He said the video and the protests it set off had made him confront the profound deficiencies of the police force, which he had tried to address through changes in policies and requirements.

“It’s horrific to watch someone be shot,” Mr. Berry said in his office on Tuesday. “So it brought from an emotional standpoint questions about policy, about procedure, questions about action that really broadened the discussion and got people involved in the conversation that hadn’t gotten involved before.”

He dismissed the calls for his resignation that came out of the Justice Department meetings, pointing instead to the progress he had made. If not been for the lapel cameras he began requiring officers to wear in January 2013, he said, the circumstances surrounding the homeless man’s killing — like the officers’ setting a dog on him, or the man’s ramblings, or the seemingly small threat he posed — may have never been fully understood.

The city has also begun training its field officers in crisis intervention, Mr. Berry said, working to reach his goal of certifying all of Albuquerque’s roughly 840 officers to handle calls involving emotionally or mentally unstable people. This, he said, would be a first among police departments in the country. Many of the people shot by the police since January 2010 had symptoms or a diagnosis of mental illness.“We’ve got a lot of work to do here,” Mr. Berry said, adding that the city needed to “craft a solution that works for all of Albuquerque, which means it has to work for the citizens, it has to work for the Police Department, it has to have milestones and measurable features so we can all hold ourselves accountable.”

At the meetings, there was no shortage of suggestions.

Jacob Montoya, a mechanical engineer, said officers should have at least an associate degree. (The current requirement is 60 college credits.) Anne Uhring, a professor, proposed that officers’ training include ethics classes. Janet Christenson, a retired city auditor, brought two pages of recommendations, such as forming an independent commission to investigate police misconduct.

Luis Saucedo, acting deputy chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told the audience at Monday’s meeting, “Part of our goal here is to restore trust in the Police Department,” though he warned that the process would take months. All sides — the city, the police officers’ union, the federal government and the courts — must sign off on an agreement, which a monitor will oversee.

As a woman at Tuesday’s meeting called for the abolishment of the union, the Albuquerque Police Officers Association, its president, Stephanie Lopez, described the challenges the department already faces. Its graduating classes have been no larger than 18 people since Mr. Berry took office, in part because in a poor state like New Mexico, “people don’t have the money to pay to get the college credits they need to apply for the job,” she said. Also, 93 officers resigned, retired or were terminated last year, over 10 percent of the force.

“I just want this process to be fair,” Ms. Lopez said. “We want to make sure that as we mandate change, we’re not also destroying what’s left of our police department.”

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B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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FROM MARIKANA, SOUTH AFRICA TO OAKLAND, CA:

THE STRUGGLE FOR WORKERS POWER


The fall of apartheid in South Africa in 1994 was a watershed victory. It culminated decades of struggle by the Black and Colored South African masses, a struggle supported by millions in the U.S. and around the world. The victory brought to power the Tripartite government of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

Now, two decades later, the ANC-led Tripartite government represents big business's interests — especially the interests of U.S. and European-based banks and corporations. This has led the government to brutally attack workers who fight back against austerity. Indeed, in 2012, at the Marikana mine, this government massacred 34 striking miners at the behest of the mine owners.

Black poverty has worsened. Inequality has worsened. Trade union officials collaborate with employers against workers, youth, and unemployed. Does this sound familiar? Isn't the situation similar in the US, with union officials not fighting employer and government attacks on workers, like the machinists at Boeing?

But in South Africa, there's an exciting new development: for the first time since the fall of Apartheid, there's a serious challenge to the Tripartite government's rule, and it comes from the largest and most militant union in Africa. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has broken with the COSATU leadership and called for South Africans not to support the ANC in this year's elections. It is currently building a workers' party and united front to lead the struggle against the capitalist onslaught of deregulation, privatization, and strike breaking.

We are privileged to present  Brother Mphumzi Maqungo,  the national treasurer of NUMSA and past chair of NUMSA's autoworker shop steward network, to discuss these developments.

Thursday, May 1st, 7:00 p.m.
ILWU Hall, Henry Schmidt Room
400 N. Point St./Mason, San Francisco

Friday, May 2, 12 Noon at UC Berkeley, McCone Hall (Room  575)
Saturday, May 3rd, 2pm. Black Repertory Theater; 3201 Adeline,
Berkeley (one block south of Ashby BART)

For updates or to get involved in building for these events, contact the May Day Committee in Solidarity with South African Workers
at: twscltransportworkers.org. Reach us directly at  (510)325-8664  or  (415)282-1908

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Please hold the date and attend…

A Celebration of Life and Struggle
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Welcome Home Lynne Stewart!
Free all political prisoners! End racist mass incarceration! Abolish the death penalty! Stop police brutality and murder!

Join Lynne Stewart and Pam Africa Sunday, May 4, 6 pm reception; 7pm rally

Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland
Donation $10

Initial Bay Area Tour Schedule:
Friday, May 2: San Francisco, Host: National Lawyers Guild, 6 pm 518 Valencia St., SF
Saturday, May 3, Palo Alto, Host: Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, afternoon
Saturday, May 3, San Jose, Host, San Jose Peace and Justice Center & NLG South Bat, evening
Sunday, May 4, Oakland, Host: Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal & Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Monday, May 5: Marin, evening
Tuesday, May 6: Sacramento, evening

Sponsors:
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal & Lynne Stewart Defense Committee

510-268-9429   jmackler@lmi.net
Tour endorsers (initial list): SF Bay Area National Lawyers Guild • Middle East Children’s Alliance • United National Antiwar Coalition • Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • World Can’t Wait • Freedom Socialist Party • Marin Peace and Justice Center • Peninsula Peace and Justice Center • Sacramento Area Peace Council • WILPF • SF Gray Panthers • Socialist Action • International Action Center • Freedom Archives

— This message sent to you by: The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal --

Lynne Stewart's release from prison was the result of great public support, an international petition campaign, and persistence by her husband. This victory for a political prisoner, as well as the release of political prisoner Marshall Eddie Conway after 44 years in prison; political prisoner Maroon Shoatz's transfer from solitary confinement to general prison population, inspires our efforts to free all political prisoners.

The exoneration of innocent death row prisoner, Glen Ford, just before the state of Louisiana was set to execute him, is another blow to the existence of the racist death penalty. And the massive hunger strikes organized by prisoners, including undocumented detainees, in California, Washington, Texas and Georgia are an example of resistance to prisoners and workers everywhere. 

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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS


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Next Tuesday marks the end of the first year in office for South Korea's President Park, Geun-hye.

On that day, South Korea's trade union confederation (the KCTU) will be holding a nationwide "people's strike" together with broader social movements including organisations of peasants, the urban poor, small shop keepers, students, and youth.

They'll be marching under the slogan "After one year under Park's Government, we cannot stand it anymore!"

Human and trade union rights have been attacked and democracy in the country has been undermined since Park came to power.

Organising strikes in President Park's Korea is increasingly dangerous.  Harsh repression is becoming the norm.  Unions are under attack.

The Korean Teachers Union has been de-registered and the Korean Government Employees Union refused registration. Union buildings have been raided. There are eleven trade union leaders behind bars at the moment, some of them still awaiting trial, some already convicted.  Four have just been bailed for trial later.

In solidarity with the 15 union leaders in prison or on bail, and with the KCTU, the global trade union movement is calling for the release of all imprisoned trade unionists.

That's why the International Trade Union Confederation has launched this new campaign on LabourStart:

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=2183&src=lsmm

It will take you less than one minute to show your support for our brothers and sisters on the front lines in the fight for democracy in Korea.

Once you've signed the campaign, please don't stop there -- spread the word in your union and workplace.

I know that we can count on your support.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

P.S. There's been a major show of support for Canadian workers on strike since September 2013 at Crown Holdings. The Toronto and York Region Labour Council has voted to boycott Carnival, whose CEO is board member of Crown.  Have you supported this campaign yet?  Please do so and spread the word.
Copyright © 2014 LabourStart, All rights reserved.
http://www.labourstart.org
Our mailing address is:
LabourStart
Unit 168, Lee Valley Technopark
Ashley Road, Tottenham
London, England N17 3LN
United Kingdom

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AN URGENT FUNDRAISER FOR LYNNE STEWART'S MEDICAL NEEDS CONTINUES
http://lynnestewart.org/

LYNNE STEWART HAS JUST BEEN DENIED MEDICAL BENEFITS. SHE CAN'T RE-APPLY UNTIL JULY! SHE IS IN URGENT NEED OF OUR HELP NOW!

Because of a determined people’s movement, Lynne is finally home with her family. But she has urgent medical needs and costs. Lynne’s Stage 4 breast cancer spread a year ago to both lungs, back, bones and lymph nodes. Now 74, she has lost weight and has trouble breathing; doctors estimate her lifespan at 12 months. Lynne will soon begin treatment requiring her to pay deductibles and co-payments. To boost the odds, she’ll use a special diet, vitamins, and other healing methods – some costly and none covered by insurance.
Lynne’s spirit is indomitable – help her fight to survive!

“I fought lions, I fought tigers, and I’m not going to let cancer get me,” Stewart said.

Lynne has always come to the aid of those who needed her. Now it’s our turn to stand by Lynne.

SEND LYNNE A DONATION TO:

On line at:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lynne-stewart-s-medical-fund

Or by USPS to:

Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
  1070 Dean Street?
  Brooklyn, New York 11216



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Tell Maj. Gen. Buchanan why Chelsea
deserves to be free!


PVT Chelsea Manning has served nearly four years in prison, yet she’s showing a remarkable spirit of persistence. She is unjustly imprisoned, but not defeated. With plans to enroll in a prelaw/political science university program, and a legal name change underway, she continues planning for her future and working to fulfill her dreams. She is determined to make the best of her situation. However, we know she could contribute more to the world if she was free.
Please write a letter to Convening Authority Major General Buchanan today urging him to reduce Chelsea’s sentence!
We began collecting letters to include in PVT Manning’s clemency packet last fall. We expected that the military would finalize her record of trial last December, and that she could then submit her application to Maj. Gen. Buchanan by the end of 2013. Just like so many times before, however, the military’s process has slowed Chelsea’s ability to defend her rights. Defense attorney David Coombs now estimates that it will be at least another month before the clemency application can be submitted.
Want to make sure decision-makers know why you believe Chelsea deserves to go free? If you haven’t done so yet, please write a short letter to Maj. Gen. Buchanan. Hundreds of people have already submitted letters for us to use, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and award-winning author Alice Walker.
As Alice Walker wrote:
Private Manning was the one soldier willing to speak out against what he thought was wrong. When others silently followed orders, Manning could not. Pvt. Manning is a humanist, meaning he sees humanity before nationality, and values human life above all else. When he released documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, he wanted the American people, and the world, to judge for themselves if the U.S. military was properly valuing human life in Iraq and Afghanistan. As taxpayers who fund that military, we deserve that opportunity.
Learn now how you can write a letter to be included in Chelsea Manning’s official application for clemency!
Please share this information to friends and community leaders, urging them to add their voice to this important effort before it's too late.
http://www.privatemanning.org/pardonpetition



Help us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591


COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559

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Only an Innocent Man Would Voluntarily Return
to Prison to Fight Against his Life Sentence
and For Exoneration —
That Courageous Man is Lorenzo Johnson.

The PA Attorney General’s Office Agrees to Investigate New Facts and Witnesses —
  Send Your Message Now to PA AG
Kathleen Kane: Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson!

On January 29, 2014 Lorenzo Johnson’s attorney, Michael Wiseman, met with representatives of PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane to discuss the new evidence of Lorenzo Johnson’s innocence contained in legal filings now pending in the Pennsylvania courts. This includes affidavits confirming Johnson’s presence in New York City at the time of the Harrisburg murder and the identity of the actual killers, as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Attorney Wiseman said Kane’s office promised to investigate these new facts in order to assess whether they merit the relief that Lorenzo Johnson seeks in his PCRA petition.

Speaking to AP reporter Mary Claire Dale on February 11, 2014 Wiseman said, “We believe the witnesses we presented to them are credible, and give a coherent version of the events. I take them at their word, that they’re going to do a straightforward, honest review.”  Kane spokesman Joe Peters confirmed the meeting to AP “but said the office won’t comment on the new evidence until the court filing,” (referring to the March 31, 2014 date for the AG’s response to Johnson’s October 2013 court filing).

It is the Office of the PA Attorney General that is responsible for the false prosecution of Lorenzo Johnson from trial through appeals. And just a few months ago, the Attorney General’s office opposed a federal petition based on this new evidence saying there was no prima facie claim for relief. This resulted in the denial of Lorenzo Johnson’s Motion to File a Second Writ of Habeas Corpus in the federal court.

On December 18, 2013 a press conference called by the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson protested these actions of the PA Attorney General and delivered petitions demanding dismissal of the charges and immediate freedom for Lorenzo. Tazza, Lorenzo’s wife, declared, “1,000 signatures means we are not in this alone…I won't stop until he’s home. There is nothing and no one that can stop me from fighting for what’s right.”

This is Lorenzo Johnson’s second fight for his innocence and freedom. In January 2012, after 16 years of court battles to prove his innocence, a federal appeals court held his sentence was based on insufficient evidence – a judicial acquittal. Lorenzo was freed from prison. But after a petition filed by the PA Attorney General the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Lorenzo Johnson’s conviction and he was re-incarcerated to continue serving a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit.

This innocent man drove himself back to prison in June 2012—after less than five months of freedom—leaving his new wife and family, construction job and advocacy on behalf of others wrongfully convicted. The reason Lorenzo Johnson voluntarily returned to prison? Because he is innocent and fighting for full vindication.

In the words of Lorenzo Johnson, “A second is too long to be in prison when you are Innocent, so eighteen years … is Intolerable.”

Add your voices and demand again: Dismiss the charges against Lorenzo Johnson. Free Lorenzo NOW!

 SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

CONTRIBUTE TO HELP TAZZA AND THE OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS VISIT LORENZO AND STAY IN CONTACT!


Write: Lorenzo Johnson
            DF 1036
            SCI Mahanoy
            301 Morea Rd.
            Frackville, PA 17932

 Email: Lorenzo Johnson through JPAY.com code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC


 www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org

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End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global 
Militarization 
United National Antiwar Coalition Call for Spring Days of
 Action 2014

Today we issue an international call for Spring Days of Action—2014, a coordinated campaign in April and May to end drone killings, drone surveillance and global militarization.

The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.

The campaign will provide information on:

1. The suffering of tens-of-thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.

2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.

In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama’s “pivot” into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60 percent of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will show, among other things, how this surge of “pivot” forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the U.S. military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival. In short, we will connect drones and militarization with “austerity” in America.

3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.

We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor U.S. citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.

The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.

The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers:

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180

And to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.

The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.
The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call: 
Lyn Adamson, Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace; Dennis Apel, Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California; Judy Bello, Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars; Medea Benjamin, Code Pink; Leah Bolger, Former National President, Veterans for Peace; Canadian Voice of Women for Peace; Sung-Hee Choi, Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea; Chelsea C. Faria, Graduate student, Yale Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace; Sandy Fessler, Rochester (NY) Against War; Joy First; Bruce K. Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space; Holly Gwinn Graham, Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA; Regina Hagen, Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany; Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence; Malachy Kilbride; Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo, Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition; Tamara Lorincz, Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada; Nick Mottern, KnowDrones.org; Agneta Norberg, Swedish Peace Council; Pepperwolf, Director, Women Against Military Madness; Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American; Bases CAAB UK; Mathias Quackenbush, San Francisco, CA; Lisa Savage, Code Pink, State of Maine; Janice Sevre-Duszynska; Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck, Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany; Cindy Sheehan; Lucia Wilkes Smith, Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM),  Ground; Military Drones Committee; David Soumis, Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin; Debra Sweet, World Can’t Wait; David Swanson, WarisACrime.org; Brian Terrell, Voices for Creative Nonviolence; United National Antiwar Coalition; Veterans for Peace; Dave Webb, Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK); Curt Wechsler, Fire John Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s); Loring Wirbel, Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO); Women Against Military Madness; Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat; Leila Zand, Fellowship of Reconciliation.
United National Antiwar Coalition
UNACpeace@gmail.com
UNAC
P.O. Box 123
Delmar, NY 12054
518-227-6947
www.unacpeace.org

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Sireen Khudairy Appeal Update.

Sireen Khudairy was arrested again at 4am on Tuesday 7th January 2014. According to reports she has been taken to Huwwara military point. When the Israeli army took her from her home they didn't show any papers to her or the person she was with.

This follows eight months of harassment of this 24-year-old Palestinian woman who is a teacher, activist and supporter of the non-violent action against the Israeli occupation. She was previously imprisoned from May to July 2013, and has been subjected to frequent harassment ever since. See further details at:

http://freesireen.wordpress.com

Please help by contacting your Embassies urgently to demand her release and spread her appeal widely. Follow updates on:

https://www.facebook.com/FreeSireenKhudiri?ref=hl

Please contact us to let us know any action you take. We will pass this information on to her family. Thanks for your solidarity and support.  

Steven Katsineris, January 2014
 
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U.S. Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.

Stripped of  “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more determined as his PA state court appeal continues.

Increased public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

—Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq.
   October 25, 2013

For more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.
Hear Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”
Go to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and how to help.
 
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PUSH CHELSEA'S JAILERS TO RESPECT HER IDENTITY
Call and write Ft Leavenworth today and tell them to honor Manning's wishes around her name and gender:
Call: (913) 758-3600


Write to:
Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander
U.S. Detention Barracks
1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027

Private Manning has been an icon both for the government transparency movement and LGBTQ activists because of her fearlessness and acts of conscience. Now, as she begins serving her sentence, Chelsea has asked for help with legal appeals, family visits, education, and support for undergoing gender transition. The latter is a decision she’s made following years of experiencing gender dysphoria and examining her options. At a difficult time in her life, she joined the military out of hope–the hope that she could use her service to save lives, and also the hope that it would help to suppress her feelings of gender dysphoria. But after serving time in Iraq, Private Manning realized what mattered to her most was the truth, personal as well as political, even when it proved challenging.

Now she wants the Fort Leavenworth military prison to allow her access to hormone replacement therapy which she has offered to pay for herself, as she pursues the process to have her name legally changed to ‘Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.’

To encourage the prison to honor her transgender identity, we’re calling on progressive supporters and allies to contact Fort Leavenworth officials demanding they acknowledge her requested name change immediately. Currently, prison officials are not required to respect Chelsea’s identity, and can even refuse to deliver mail addressed to the name ‘Chelsea Manning.’ However, it’s within prison administrators’ power to begin using the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ now, in advance of the legal name change which will most likely be approved sometime next year. It’s also up to these officials to approve Private Manning’s request for hormone therapy.
Call: (913) 758-3600


Write to:
Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander
U.S. Detention Barracks
1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027

Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).”

While openly transgender individuals are allowed to serve in many other militaries around the world, the US military continues to deny their existence. Now, by speaking up for Chelsea’s right to treatment, you can support one brave whistleblower in her personal struggle, and help set an important benchmark for the rights of transgender individuals everywhere. (Remember that letters written with focus and a respectful tone are more likely to be effective.) Feel free to copy this sample letter.

Earlier this year, the Private Manning Support Network won the title of most “absolutely fabulous overall contingent” at the San Francisco Pride Parade, the largest celebration of its kind for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) people nationwide. Over one thousand people marched for Private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in that parade, to show LGBTQ community pride for the Iraq War’s most well-known whistleblower.

Help us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591

COURAGE TO RESIST
http://couragetoresist.org
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
 

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 SAVE CCSF!


Two campaigns that need funds – Please donate!
Posted on August 25, 2013

Cartoon by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman

DOE CAMPAIGN
We are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other side who have much more money and resources than we do.
So please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!

LEGAL CAMPAIGN
Save CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office, Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.
The total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.

PLEASE HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!
Checks can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent to:
Save CCSF Coalition
2132 Prince St.
Berkeley, CA 94705
Or you may donate online:  http://www.gofundme.com/4841ns

http://www.saveccsf.org/
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16 Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"

American Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:
California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.

In California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The Prince."

Gabriel Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the last 16 years:

“Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself, between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”

That’s why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic conditions.

California Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.

Solitary is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions. Here’s why:

The majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for violent prisoners)
Even for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide
It jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time reintegrating into society.

And to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished. But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.

Sign the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term solitary confinement.

Our criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly. The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.

Thank you,
Anthony for the ACLU Action team
P.S. The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They are:

-End group punishment – prisoners say that officials often punish groups to address individual rule violations

-Abolish the debriefing policy, which is often demanded in return for better food or release from solitary

-End long-term solitary confinement

-Provide adequate and nutritious food

-Expand or provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates

Sources
“Solitary - and anger - in California's prisons.” Los Angeles Times July 13, 2013
“Pelican Bay Prison Hunger-Strikers' Stories: Gabriel Reyes.” TruthOut July 9, 2013
“Solitary confinement should be banned in most cases, UN expert says.” UN News October 18, 2011
"Stop Solitary - Two Pager" ACLU.org
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What you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990

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Egypt: The Next President -- a little Egyptian boy speaks his remarkable mind!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDm2PrNV1I

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Wealth Inequality in America

[This is a must see to believe video...bw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM

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Read the transcription of hero Bradley Manning's 35-page statement explaining why he leaked "state secrets" to WikiLeaks.

March 1, 2013

Alternet

The statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bradley-mannings-surprising-statement-court-details-why-he-made-his-historic?akid=10129.229473.UZvQfK&rd=1&src=newsletter802922&t=7

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You Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters

Posted 1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Occupy Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists – please click here to support the NLG.

We strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number (888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy. This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement Encounters

What Rights Do I Have?

Whether or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your political activities.

Standing Up For Free Speech

The government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a "subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance, infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76 COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.

What if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?

What if an agent or police officer comes to the door?

Do not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions. Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future. Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.

Do I have to answer questions?

You have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you reside.

Do I have to give my name?

As above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name could in some circumstances be a crime.

Do I need a lawyer?

You have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer. If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.

If I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have something to hide?

Anything you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights and refusing to answer questions.

Can agents search my home or office?

You do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of your workspace without your permission.

What if agents have a search warrant?

If you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes, including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first. (Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant is present.)

Do I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?

No. If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.

What if I speak to government agents anyway?

Even if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.

What if the police stop me on the street?

Ask if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not consent to a search of your bags or other property.

What if police or agents stop me in my car?

Keep your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance. You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one has to answer any questions.

What if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?

Write down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as possible.

What if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer their questions?

A grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.

What if I receive a grand jury subpoena?

Grand jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping ("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense attorney immediately.

The government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and disruption, discouraging continued activism.

Federal grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries, testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony, should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in your testimony.

Frequently prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.

In front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.

What if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?

If you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare instances you may face criminal contempt charges.

What If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the purposes of this pamphlet.

? Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.

? Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney. If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be barred from returning.

Based on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.

Do I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or signing any DHS papers?

Yes. You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you a list of free or low cost legal service providers.

Should I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?

If you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be. Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.

Am I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?

If you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider refusing to talk to the agent at all.

If I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?

Yes. In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief for you.

Can I call my consulate if I am arrested?

Yes. Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the right to refuse help from your consulate.

What happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing is over?

You could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.

What should I do if I want to contact DHS?

Always talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of your options to you.

What Are My Rights at Airports?

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches, detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion, sex or ethnicity.

If I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop and search me?

Yes. Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.

Can my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?

Yes. Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.

If I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get off the plane?

The pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.

What If I Am Under 18?

Do I have to answer questions?

No. Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.

What if I am detained?

If you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no cost.

Do I have the right to express political views at school?

Public school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.

Can my backpack or locker be searched?

School officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property, but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.

Disclaimer

This booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are contacted as well.

NLG National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI

888-NLG-ECOL

(888-654-3265)

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Free Mumia NOW!

Prisonradio.org

Write to Mumia:

Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335

SCI Mahanoy

301 Morea Road

Frackville, PA 17932

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein

August 21, 2011 (917) 689-4009

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO

LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!

FREE MUMIA NOW!

www.FreeMumia.com

http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/profiles/blogs/mumia-is-formally-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-w-out-hearing-he-s



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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

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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-herm\

an-wallace

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WITNESS GAZA

http://www.witnessgaza.com/

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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=2071005093\

21891

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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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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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. 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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Checkpoint - Jasiri X 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU



Published on Jan 28, 2014
"Checkpoint" is based on the oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch....

Follow Jasiri X at https://twitter.com/jasiri_x

LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point

If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint

Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint

If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint

At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint

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Exceptional art from the streets of Oakland:

Oakland Street Dancing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqH9s5mwTEY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atyTZ8prhCg

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NYC RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_s8e1R6rG8&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

On Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of Black Liberation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Fukushima Never Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU

"Fukushima, Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the Japanese government.

This is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.

The government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and then

when the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.

It also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new plants and government subsidies. This film breaks

the information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and around the world that Fukushima is over.

Production Of Labor Video Project

P.O. Box 720027

San Francisco, CA 94172

www.laborvideo.org

lvpsf@laborvideo.org

For information on obtaining the video go to:

www.fukushimaneveragain.com

(415)282-1908


*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

1000 year of war through the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Anatomy of a Massacre - Afganistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded

Afghans accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder

To see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures

Follow us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter

(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)

The recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in

mystery. But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report

confronts the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.

"They came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common

amongst the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations

that Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced

"one man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious

that despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising

alarm. "How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have

weapon accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the

questions the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however

is very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which

means relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my

hands on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."

A Film By SBS

Distributed By Journeyman Pictures

April 2012

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Photo of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/02/us/the-events-leading-to-the-sooti\

ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp

SPD Security Cams.wmv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWDNbQUgm4&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Kids being put on buses and transported from school to "alternate locations" in

Terror Drills

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFia_w8adWQ

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Private prisons,

a recession resistant investment opportunity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGLDOxx9Vg

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Attack Dogs used on a High School Walkout in MD, Four Students Charged With

"Thought Crimes"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wafMaML17w

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Common forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViSpM4K276w&feature=related

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Organizing and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman

http://arthazelwood.com/instigator/occupy/occupy-birth-video.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Rep News 12: Yes We Kony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68GbzIkYdc8

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

The New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4rLfja8488

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Japan One Year Later

http://www.onlineschools.org/japan-one-year-later/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

The CIA's Heart Attack Gun

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/the-cias-heart-attack-g\

un-.html

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

The Invisible American Workforce

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Labor Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbQxnb4so3U

For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org.


*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

The Battle of Oakland

by brandon jourdan plus

http://vimeo.com/36256273

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Officers Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces

By ANDY NEWMAN

February 1, 2012, 10:56 am

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/officers-pulled-off-street-after-ta\

pe-of-beating-surfaces/?ref=nyregion

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

This is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!

Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political

strategy

behind the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black

and Brown people in the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded

If you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to watch this

video and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community

as a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing

voters.

This speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12,

2012.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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...

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

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*


School police increasingly arresting American students?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-efNBvjUU&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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/

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*


We Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0WSNRpy3g

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8C-qIgbP9o&feature=share&mid=552

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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-add\

s-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

*---------*

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

*---------*

THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S880UldxB1o

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pX9LeE-g8&feature=player_embedded

*---------*

Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrvMzqopHH0

*---------*

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

*----*

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

*----*

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

*----*

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

*---------*

Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8isD33f-I

*---------*

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

*---------*

#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

*---------*

#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street

By adele pham

http://vimeo.com/30146870

*---------*

Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!

http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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


*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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