Sunday, July 13, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: SUNDAY, JULY 13, 2014

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

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

The Free Palestine Movement asks for your help with this urgent need.

Call for Medical Doctors to Travel Immediately to Gaza


This is a call for medical doctors who are willing and able to travel immediately to Gaza to help treat Palestinians wounded in Israel's latest assault on the besieged Strip. Your entry into Gaza will be facilitated and help with the travel costs is also available. If you are a medical doctor who is interested, please reply to this message.

The FPM Team

Free Palestine Movement:  https://freepalestinemovement.org

Donations:  https://freepalestinemovement.org/donate-2/


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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. ARTICLES IN FULL 
(Unless otherwise noted)

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

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



1) UAW: Union Local Coming to Tenn. Volkswagen Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS




2) Three Rikers Officials Charged in Brutal Beating of Inmate
By




3) Race Is On to Profit From Rise of Urgent Care
By




4) Ford Says Committed to South Africa, Plays Down Concern Over Strikes
By REUTERS






UNITED STATES:  END ALL AID TO ISRAEL
FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE
July 10, 2014
https://unacpeace.org/




6) In Connecticut, Breaking Barrier Between a Suburb and Public Housing
By BENJAMIN MUELLER

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/12/nyregion/in-connecticut-breaking-barrier-between-a-suburb-and-public-housing.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news




7) In Rubble of Gaza Seaside Cafe, Hunt for Victims Who Had Come for Soccer
By FARES AKRAM

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/world/middleeast/missile-at-beachside-gaza-cafe-finds-patrons-poised-for-world-cup.html




8) Gaza Deaths Spike in 3rd Day of Air Assaults While Rockets Hit Israel
"As the air campaign entered its third day, the Palestinian death toll rose to at least 78, a majority of them civilians, according to officials in Gaza. No Israelis have been reported killed. ...The Palestine chapter of Defense for Children International, an independent child-rights organization, said 14 children aged 15 and younger had been killed in the airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday, including four toddlers. The group issued a list with the names and ages of those killed, saying its Gaza-based field worker had verified each death."
By ISABEL KERSHNER




9) Obscure Rule Restricts Health Law’s Expansion of Care for Addicts
"In California, where only about 10 percent of the 18,155 beds at residential addiction treatment programs are in centers with 16 or fewer beds, officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Obama administration to soften the rule, saying in a February letter that 'California is severely limited in its ability to provide this benefit to Medi-Cal beneficiaries.'”
By




10) No Charges in Killing of Driver After Chase
By ANDREW SIDDONS




11) Wrongfully Convicted Man Takes $3 Million Settlement
"In Brooklyn alone, the convictions of seven men have been vacated this year, after the district attorney there began examining 90 troubled convictions. Filing claims against the state and the city is standard practice after a vacated conviction."
By




12) Despite a Pledge by Samsung, Child Labor Proves Resilient
By





13) Thousands of Gaza Civilians Flee After Israeli Warning
"The Health Ministry said at least 160 Palestinians, including about 135 civilians - among them some 30 children, have been killed six days of warfare, and more than 1,000 have been wounded."
By REUTERS




14) As Israel Hits Mosque and Clinic, Air Campaign’s Risks Come Home
By



























 


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

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

1) UAW: Union Local Coming to Tenn. Volkswagen Plant
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — An official with the United Auto Workers union, which suffered a stinging defeat in its attempt to unionize Volkswagen's assembly plant in Tennessee earlier this year, says it is announcing the formation of a new local at the plant.

UAW Secretary-Treasurer Gary Casteel tells The Tennessean newspaper (http://tnne.ws/1qNfSn7 ) that the union is confident the German automaker will recognize the union if it signs up a "substantial" number of workers. If successful, it would become the first unionized foreign auto plant in the South.

A Volkswagen spokesman declined to comment to The Associated Press on Thursday.

The union last year said it had signed up a majority of plant workers, but ultimately lost a contentious February vote 712-626. Republican politicians had warned that a union win could imperil economic incentives for the plant's expansion.


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

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

2) Three Rikers Officials Charged in Brutal Beating of Inmate
By

Two New York City correction officers and a captain were arrested Wednesday on charges that they handcuffed and beat an inmate unconscious with a baton at Rikers Island and then falsified documents to cover it up, the authorities said.

The arrests were part of a monthslong inquiry by the city’s Investigation Department into “a pattern of lawless conduct at Rikers that must be brought under control,” Mark G. Peters, the department commissioner, said in a statement.

“The victims here were not simply the injured inmate but the justice system itself, which cannot properly function when sworn law enforcement officers falsify documents to cover up crimes,” Mr. Peters said. The captain, Moises Simancas, 43, who has nearly 17 years’ experience, and the two correction officers, April Jackson, 34, and Tyrone Wint, 28, who were both hired in 2008, were each charged with attempted first-degree assault, which carries a maximum of 15 years in prison. They were also charged with falsifying business records, among other offenses. They were arraigned on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in the Bronx and released on $50,000 bail each.

All three were removed from contact with inmates after the beating and were suspended after their arrests.

The beating occurred on Oct. 30, 2012, just after Hurricane Sandy. Tensions were high after the storm, according to a statement by the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson. Rikers was short-staffed and inmates had been locked in their cells for much longer than usual because of the storm.

At the George R. Vierno Center, one of the 10 jails at Rikers, an inmate named Gabino Genao became verbally abusive to one of the defendants, officials said. In response, the defendants went into Mr. Genao’s cell, handcuffed him from behind and led him to a vestibule, “where one of the officers allegedly threw the first punch, but missed when the inmate ducked,” Mr. Johnson said.

The officers then pushed Mr. Genao to the floor, and all three began to punch and kick him in the head, neck and torso, officials said. At one point, one of the officers grabbed a baton and hit him multiple times. He then lost consciousness.

Mr. Genao, now 27, suffered multiple contusions that officials said were consistent with the imprint of a standard-issue baton used by the Correction Department. He had been incarcerated for a parole violation.

After the beating, officers submitted reports that omitted the use of the baton and were “inconsistent with both the assault of the inmate and the injuries he sustained,” the Investigation Department said.

The beating was part of a pattern of brutality, neglect and corruption among correction officers and supervisors that officials say is rampant at Rikers Island. Several recent deaths, including a homeless veteran who died in an overheated cell in February, have prompted fresh scrutiny of the city’s jails. Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed reforms, particularly to treatment of inmates with mental illnesses, who have surged into Rikers in recent years and suffer abuse disproportionally.

Jail beatings rarely result in prosecution, but there are exceptions. In June last year, the Bronx district attorney’s office charged 10 jail officers and supervisors, including a former Rikers security chief, with savagely beating an inmate and then conspiring to cover up the attack. The inmate, Jahmal Lightfoot, suffered two fractured eye sockets and a broken nose. After the beating, officers then accused Mr. Lightfoot — wrongfully, according to prosecutors — of slashing one of the officers with a makeshift razor.

The three arrested on Wednesday are among at least 12 correction workers referred for prosecution as part of an Investigation Department inquiry into contraband smuggling, brutality and corruption at Rikers Island. Last month, 22 people were arrested, including two correction officers, in a contraband sweep.

The Investigation Department said Wednesday that more arrests were expected.

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

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

3) Race Is On to Profit From Rise of Urgent Care
By

NORWALK, Conn. — Start in Room 4, just beyond the reception area: A man is having blood drained from a bruised finger. Over in Room 1, a woman is being treated for eye trouble. Next door, in Room 2, a boy is having his throat swabbed.

For more than eight hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, an assortment of ailments is on display at the tidy medical clinic on Main Avenue here. But all of the patients have one thing in common: No one is being treated at a traditional doctor’s office or emergency room.

Instead, they have turned to one of the fastest-growing segments of American health care: urgent care, a common category of walk-in clinics with uncommon interest from Wall Street. Once derided as “Doc in a Box” medicine, urgent care has mushroomed into an estimated $14.5 billion business, as investors try to profit from the shifting landscape in health care. The office here is part of PhysicianOne Urgent Care. Bankrolled by two private investment companies, PhysicianOne has grown into an eight-clinic operation, the largest of its kind in Connecticut, with plans for even greater expansion.

But what is happening here is also playing out across the nation, as private equity investment firms, sensing opportunity, invest billions in urgent care and related businesses. Since 2008, these investors have sunk $2.3 billion into urgent care clinics. Commercial insurance companies, regional health systems and local hospitals are also looking to buy urgent care practices or form business relationships with them.

The business model is simple: Treat many patients as quickly as possible. Urgent care is a low-margin, high-volume proposition. At PhysicianOne here, most people are in and out in about 30 minutes. The national average charge runs about $155 per patient visit. Do 30 or 35 exams a day, and the money starts to add up.

Urgent care clinics also have a crucial business advantage over traditional hospital emergency rooms in that they can cherry-pick patients. Most of these centers do not accept Medicaid and turn away the uninsured unless they pay upfront. Hospital E.R.s, by contrast, are legally obligated to treat everyone.

But as urgent care centers expand their reach, regulators in some states are scrutinizing their activities. While some states require the clinics to be licensed, most do not. It is unclear whether such urgent care centers offer better or worse care than other providers. But some family physicians — who stand to lose business to the newcomers — wonder if patients are trading quality for convenience.

“The relationship I have with my patients and the comprehensiveness of care I provide to them is important,” said Dr. Robert L. Wergin, a family physician in Milford, Neb., and the president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians. “While there is a role for these centers, if I were sick I’d rather see my regular doctor, and I hope my patients feel that way.”

Already, the race is on to build large chains with powerful, national brands — a McDonald’s or a Gap of health care. Wall Street money is driving the growth, but so are other forces. Millions of newly insured Americans are seeking care. Others are frustrated by long waits at E.R.s, or by having to conform to regular doctor’s hours.

Many experts say a cultural shift is also underway.

“We expect to do our banking 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to shop 24/7,” said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and an adjunct policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. “So now we want our health care to be 24/7.”

While convenience is one factor, so is cost. The average charge to treat acute bronchitis at an urgent care center in 2012 was $122, compared with $814 at an emergency room, according to data on the website of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, which operates in Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. The price of treating a middle-ear infection was $100 versus nearly $500 in an E.R. Such cost differences matter not only to commercial insurers, but also to consumers with high-deductible health plans.

Still, just how quickly urgent care is proliferating is difficult to measure. The Urgent Care Association of America, which represents more than 2,600 clinics, estimates there are more than 9,000 clinics in the United States. But Thomas Charland, who runs Merchant Medicine, a research and consulting firm in Minnesota, puts the number at 5,000 to 6,000.

One reason for the discrepancy, Mr. Charland explained, is that the industry is dominated by physician-owned practices with one or two facilities that nobody tracks. But a bigger issue, he said, is that the industry lacks clear criteria about what exactly urgent care means.

“Just because a physician’s office extended its hours doesn’t make it urgent care,” Mr. Charland said. “To me, urgent care means you can do X-rays, that you can do sutures, maybe you’re open one weekend day, plus one or two evenings.”

Regulators in some states are struggling with that question and others as well. In Illinois, for instance, the authorities restrict the use of the word urgent, so clinics there are called “immediate care” facilities. Other states have weighed proposals on whether urgent care facilities should be required to accept Medicaid or uninsured patients.

Despite concerns of possible increased regulations, companies are lining up to buy urgent care groups.

The insurance giant Humana paid nearly $800 million in 2010 to buy Concentra, the nation’s largest group of urgent care centers, with about 300 currently. Two years later, Dignity Health, a San Francisco-based health system, acquired U.S. HealthWorks, a group that today has 176 centers.

Even hospitals are embracing the trend. Florida Hospital in Orlando, for example, has opened 24 Centra Care urgent care clinics.

“We have a number of urgent care centers that have opened up around where I practice, and almost every day, we have patients transferred to us from one of them,” said Dr. Robert E. O’Connor, the chairman of emergency medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and vice president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

But some of the most aggressive buyers have been private equity firms, according to data from a research firm, PitchBook.

In 2010, General Atlantic, a private equity firm, and Sequoia Capital, a giant in venture capital, acquired a stake in MedExpress Urgent Care, which operated 47 clinics in four states. Today, MedExpress has 130 clinics in 10 states.

Last fall, when Dr. R. Robert Rohatsch and his partners decided they needed additional capital to expand their practice, Urgent Care of Connecticut, they received bids from about a dozen private equity firms. Dr. Rohatsch and his partners chose PineBridge Investments and Pulse Equity Partners, which specializes in health and wellness investments.

“We’ve focused on how health care is going to be delivered to consumers in the new world order and how do consumers want their health care to be delivered,” said Douglas W. Lehrman, the founder and chief executive of Pulse Equity.

For now, at least, many patients seem satisfied. At a PhysicianOne clinic, Roberta Giordano got an X-ray recently after she dropped a kitchen knife on her foot, severing a tendon. Peter Andino arrived at the Norwalk clinic on a recent Thursday evening after smashing his finger in a car door. The doctor quickly punctured his nail to relieve the pressure and wrapped up the finger. Mr. Andino was in and out in 45 minutes.

“Dealing with the E.R. is a hassle,” Mr. Andino said. “This place is clean, it’s quick, and it’s about five minutes away from my house. What more could you want?”

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

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

4) Ford Says Committed to South Africa, Plays Down Concern Over Strikes
By REUTERS

JOHANNESBURG — Ford Motor Co has a long-term commitment to South Africa, its regional head said, playing down any concerns about strikes that an engineering federation said had prompted the U.S. carmaker to consider pulling out of the country.

The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA) said the local head of Ford, Jeff Nemeth, told SEIFSA's chief executive that "he was under pressure from his head office to pull the company's operation out South Africa."

Nemeth told SEIFSA of concerns within Ford over strike action, SEIFSA spokeswoman Ollie Madlala said.

Nemeth spoke to SEIFSA shortly before more than 220,000 workers led by the NUMSA metalworkers union - South Africa's biggest - launched a strike for higher pay that has hit the supply of auto parts.

Asked to comment, the president of Ford's Middle East and Africa operations, Jim Benintende, said: "We have a long-term commitment to South Africa... and we're making news next week about future products."

Ford wanted to respect the strike negotiation process "so all we have to say is that we hope all sides come to amicable agreements as soon as possible," he said.

The strike, now in its second week, has already forced General Motors to halt production, and Ford and other automakers could follow suit if it continues.

The NUMSA strike follows a walkout by platinum miners that lasted five months and ended two weeks ago.

A four-week strike last year by more than 30,000 NUMSA members at major automakers cost the industry around $2 billion.

Ford sells around 6,000 vehicles a month in South Africa, making it the third-largest seller behind Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG.

It also exports vehicles from South Africa.

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet)

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

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

5) ISRAEL:  STOP THE KILLING OF PALESTINIANS
UNITED STATES:  END ALL AID TO ISRAEL
FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE
Statement by United National Antiwar Coalition
July 10, 2014
https://unacpeace.org/

Israel, fully backed by the United States, has engaged in collective punishment of the Palestinian people since 1948 through forced evacuation, war, occupation, apartheid practices, expanding settlements, mass incarceration, and outright terrorism.  From its inception, the Zionist objective has been ethnic cleansing and land appropriation.

The Israeli propaganda machine always has a pretext, based on charges of anti-Semitism and “existential” threat, to justify its murderous actions against the indigenous Palestinian population.  Today, they blame Hamas for the kidnapping and killing of three teenagers.  This comes in the context of the Israeli government’s anger at the recent reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

 In “retaliation” for the slain Israeli youth, reminiscent of the Southern lynchings in the U.S., a racist gang of thugs kidnapped a Palestinian 16-year old, Mohammad Aba Khudair, and brutally beat and tortured him and finally, burned him alive.  Days later, his American 15-year old cousin, Tarek Abu Khdeir, was savagely beaten by masked police and others, and then arrested and held while medical treatment was withheld.

In recent weeks, the State of Israel has carried out thousands of military raids of Palestinian homes, arrested hundreds, encouraged mob violence against Palestinians and their civic institutions, killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, and intensified air attacks.

The people of Gaza, living in the world’s largest penal colony, who have never recovered from Israel’s last major assault of 2008-2009 and the ongoing siege, are once again the targets of a reign of terror from a major military power.  On July 8, Israel launched a new military offensive called “Operation Protective Edge” with a barrage of intensifying missile attacks on Gaza, activating reservists, and massing thousands of infantry and assault units at the Gaza border, threatening a full-scale ground and air invasion.

There is no justification for the latest escalation of massive military and civilian violence and racist hatred directed at the besieged Palestinians.  Without U.S. financial (over $3 billion dollars annually) and political backing and military weapons, Israel could not carry out its campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing.

When U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki justified the support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza by claiming that Israel has a right to defend itself, the question was asked whether the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves.  Despite considerable pressure, Ms. Psaki did not honor the question with a response.   In spite of the hugely disproportionate might of the forces arrayed against them, the Palestinians heroically continue to resist.  The U.S. antiwar movement must show our solidarity with them and build protests everywhere.

At the UNAC founding conference in 2010, for the first time, a large representative gathering of antiwar and social justice activists took a strong stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.  We demanded the U.S. end all aid to Israel - military, economic, and diplomatic - and took a stand in support of the Palestinian Right of Return and the international campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.  This stance was a turning point for the Palestine solidarity movement in the U.S. and should be embraced by all who stand for justice.

We demand:
Stop Israeli bombing and killing
End all U.S. aid to Israel
Support the Palestinian call for BDS


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

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

6) In Connecticut, Breaking Barrier Between a Suburb and Public Housing
By BENJAMIN MUELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/12/nyregion/in-connecticut-breaking-barrier-between-a-suburb-and-public-housing.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

NEW HAVEN — Dillard Bennett has lived for most of his life in the shadow of a 12-foot-tall chain-link fence that divides his public housing project from an adjacent suburb. He had to go the long way around to make a trip to a shopping center or to visit his pastor’s home.

His family moved to New Haven from Georgia in 1959, seeking an escape from segregated buses and racial violence. Instead, they found what Mr. Bennett, who is black, called a signal that “hatred for black folks” endures: 1,500 feet of thickly woven metal, enclosing a cluster of public housing projects on three sides.

“They don’t put their hands on you, but they got the wrong attitudes,” Mr. Bennett, 70, said of his neighbors in Hamden, Conn., the suburb of 60,000 on the other side of the fence.

Now the two sides have reached a grudging truce. In May, excavators began tearing down parts of the fence to make way for three roads that will eventually connect the public housing projects to Hamden — the first breach in this border in half a century. The first road is expected to poke through by September.

Built by Hamden in the 1950s to keep crime out of an aspiring middle-class neighborhood, the fence choked off access to jobs for public housing residents and obstructed emergency responders. Anger festered in the projects, and unemployment rates surpassed 75 percent. By 1990, New Haven’s violent crime rate nearly tripled the national average. Rocks sometimes flew over the fence, once battering a Hamden school bus.

In recent years, New Haven remodeled its projects, and the police say violent crime there dropped to nearly zero, but the fence remained. In 2005, under the guise of repairs, Hamden added a second, sturdier fence, which rises in places to 16 feet. Beyond the physical affront, public housing residents were angered by the inequalities the fence embodied, with Hamden’s median income more than four times the average income in New Haven’s housing projects.

New Haven officials have pushed to erase the silvery scar from the edge of their $200 million pastel, mixed-income redevelopment, which currently houses 178 families in a northwest neighborhood called West Rock.

But a chorus of opposition from Hamden residents, some of whom say they still sleep with guns under their beds for fear of attacks by public housing residents, repeatedly overwhelmed the calls to remove the fence. The resistance has emerged from the same residents, both black and white, who recently elected Hamden’s first black mayor.

Mayor Toni Harp of New Haven said the fence’s fall was long overdue. “It’s a relic from the past,” Ms. Harp said. “It was trying to keep the problems of low-income people in one town and not have them move into another town.”

The partial dismantling of the fence was prompted in part by inquiries by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development into New Haven’s claim that its existence fostered discrimination against poor, mostly black residents of public housing. But the city also discovered that the fence, long assumed to sit on Hamden property, actually was built on land owned by New Haven.

That allowed New Haven to tear down the fence without Hamden’s approval.

Hamden residents are not pleased, saying traffic from the new roads will overwhelm their quiet streets. The town’s Legislative Council recently approved a $25,000 historical study into border issues, although it is unlikely to change the result.

Marilyn Hutsell, 61, a black resident of Hamden, has been one of those clamoring for more protection. She endured two stolen cars and one home invasion, she said, and she blames New Haven residents who crossed the fence before it was bolstered in 2005. Hamden cannot risk more violence, Ms. Hutsell said, nor can it permit a culture of “handouts” to leak from the projects into her self-sufficient suburb.

“We don’t want the thugs on the corner, the cars racing through here,” she said. “We don’t want the boomboxes and the loud radios and the music.”

And she said, “They will not be paying their fair share.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, two Hamden police officers straddled bikes just steps from the fence, part of an expanded police presence intended to alleviate residents’ concerns. Hamden also plans to establish a joint police substation with New Haven in the area and install surveillance cameras, Mayor Scott Jackson of Hamden said.

Mr. Jackson had grown so frustrated with his town’s support of the fence that in 2012 he had to be restrained as he confronted a constituent during a heated public meeting. But with federal funding now at risk in the investigation into housing discrimination, the mayor has grown more subdued, choosing to focus on how to manage the sudden turnabout.

“Every time a bike is stolen within a cannon shot of where the fence used to be, it’s going to be blamed on somebody over there,” he said, referring to the public housing projects.

That feeling is familiar to Esther Pearson, 77, a tenant leader in New Haven who took part in intertown mediation sessions over this past year. The discussions were intended to build community, Ms. Pearson said, but instead, they added to her sense of alienation.

Hamden residents largely ignored plans for a cross-border picnic, she said, and repeatedly blamed the New Haven delegation for drug traffic that draws people from both sides. Ms. Pearson stopped attending meetings after two police officers arrived with Hamden’s contingent, which made her feel threatened.

In an era when discriminatory language is frowned upon, Ms. Pearson said, residents of Hamden resorted to veiled remarks.

“They didn’t actually call us blacks, but you could know what they were talking about,” she said.

The fact that more black homeowners are now moving into Hamden has muddled the conflict’s racial dynamics, leading to suggestions that growing class anxieties have made Hamden residents more guarded about opening the border.

But economics underlay the rationale for the fence from the beginning. Notes about deliberations in 1950 show that New Haven helped build the fence, whose purpose was described as “to keep low-income families out of Hamden.”

According to the notes, officials of the Housing Authority of New Haven felt responsible for an earlier effort to shove public housing residents to the edge of the city, a decision that hindered access to transportation and jobs. (The parcel of land that housing officials chose had previously served as a pig farm.) To appease their suburban neighbors, New Haven officials helped hem in their own residents.

“Though H.A.N.H. did not begin with these intents,” the notes read, referring to the authority, “pressure from white neighborhoods in New Haven forced it to build a higher-density project in an isolated corner of New Haven, and whites in Hamden forced them to insure that these families would stay there.”

For some housing experts, the fence has stood as a reminder of the exclusionary zoning rules and wariness toward public housing that prevail in towns across the country, including in Westchester County, N.Y., where plans for affordable housing have faced bitter opposition.

The fact that HUD helped spur the fence’s removal, though, has heartened housing activists who once viewed the federal agency as apathetic about segregating neighborhoods. In a prominent 1995 lawsuit, Baltimore public housing residents sued the department for, among other things, financing a fence around their low-income development. Siding with the residents, a federal judge ruled that the agency had concentrated them in the poorest areas, but said it was not clear that the fence in particular was discriminatory.

“We put up all kinds of barriers, and it’s to isolate ourselves with our own kind,” said Robert Solomon, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law who served as interim director of the Housing Authority of New Haven from 1999 to 2002. The result, he said, is “segregated masses of housing.”

A stone’s throw from Mr. Bennett’s apartment, on the Hamden side of a section of the remaining fence, Miriam Massey, 74, recalled living in fear of public housing residents she described as “third-generation welfare, uneducated people.”

But Ms. Massey, who is white, said she was now willing to see what the opened roads bring.

Maybe, she said, the two towns will recapture the harmony they briefly forged during the Northeast blackout of 1965. A power failure blanketed Hamden, including Ms. Massey’s home. But the streetlights on her block alone flickered on. The reason? A generator from New Haven’s housing projects was helping to power her block.

That night, along a border where trust is scarce and fears run high, street lamps lit the gloomy sidewalks.



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

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

7) In Rubble of Gaza Seaside Cafe, Hunt for Victims Who Had Come for Soccer
By FARES AKRAM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/world/middleeast/missile-at-beachside-gaza-cafe-finds-patrons-poised-for-world-cup.html

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — About a dozen local Palestinians gathered Wednesday evening at the Fun Time Beach cafe, a beachside eatery of plastic chairs, umbrellas, walls of cloth and palm leaves, a container for a kitchen and a small bathroom, to watch the World Cup match between Argentina and the Netherlands.

What they were not watching for was an Israeli missile, apparently targeting what Israel’s military later described as a single terrorist. The blast destroyed the cafe and killed at least eight people.

On Thursday, bulldozers, excavators and rescue officers were digging through the remnants of the cafe on the golden sand of this city in the southern Gaza Strip. They were looking for the body of Salim Sawalli, a possible ninth victim. Two of Mr. Sawalli’s brothers were among the dead.Kamel Sawalli, the oldest of the four brothers, was sitting up beside one of the bulldozer drivers, refusing calls from relatives to attend the funerals. The sand was wet from seeping seawater, making their work to find Salim harder.
I will not go before I find Salim!” the brother shouted over the roar of the bulldozer. “The three should be buried together.”

The cafe was one of more than 750 locations that the Israeli military struck in the first 48 hours of its aerial blitz in Gaza that began in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with the stated goal of halting the rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli towns and cities.

Among the targets listed by the military are concealed rocket launchers, weapons stores, training sites, tunnels and other facilities used by the militant groups. The military has also bombed scores of homes it says are used as control and command centers by field operatives of Hamas, the Islamic group that dominates Gaza, and other militant organizations. In those cases the occupants are told to vacate the premises, usually by a telephone call followed by a small missile without an explosive warhead hitting the roof as a warning of a pending attack, though the system is not foolproof.

The death toll in Gaza had risen to at least 78 by Thursday, the majority of them noncombatants, according to Health Ministry officials in the Palestinian coastal enclave.

When the military aims to kill a specific militant in a precision attack, no heads-up is given. “We don’t warn terrorists,” said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military. Still, the military says it makes efforts to avoid collateral damage.

The details of what happened at the Fun Time Beach cafe remain hazy. Colonel Lerner said the missile had been meant to be a “precision strike,” adding, “We were targeting a terrorist.”

But he had no immediate information on the identity of the person in Israel’s sights or why the military struck when the cafe was abuzz with more than a dozen people.

Residents of Khan Younis said that Wednesday night was particularly unnerving because of the explosions.

“The bombing did not stop, the children could not sleep, it was really frightening,” said Hassan Bashiti, 52, who stood with a group of men wearing white gowns in the main street of the town where all the stores were closed, waiting for the funerals.

At the Nasser Clinical Center, the main hospital in the city, the wounded were still arriving at noon on Thursday. The wailing sirens of incoming ambulances mixed with the patriotic ballads that blared from the loudspeakers of cars on their way out, leading funeral processions.

Tamer al-Astal, 27, was lying in a hospital bed being treated for shrapnel wounds in his face and leg from the blast on the beach. Mr. Astal, a construction worker, said he lived near the cafe and went there every night.

“We were watching news on the television and waiting for the match to begin,” he recalled. “I heard a terrible boom and felt myself suffocating. I woke up to find myself here in the hospital.”

Three of Mr. Astal’s cousins were among the dead.

Samah Sawalli, 29, said her brothers had been spending their nights at the cafe and coming home at dawn when the daily fast starts in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“They would break their fast there,” she said, wearing a black veil and surrounded by her mother, who was unable to speak, and other women at the family’s home in Khan Younis. Weeping, she recalled their assuring her that Fun Time Beach “was a safe place.”

With the casualties of Israel’s aerial campaign in Gaza mounting, Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing, the main gateway for Gaza’s population of 1.7 million, to allow the evacuation of wounded to hospitals in Egypt and the passage of Palestinians who hold Egyptian citizenship. The crossing, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, had been closed for about a month.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the gate, which Hamas officers shut in a desperate attempt to control the crowds.

Nariman Shurab made it into the departure hall with her three children, who were barefoot. Her husband was unable to travel with them, she said, crying, because he does not hold an Egyptian passport, only a Palestinian one.

She said that an airstrike near her house in Khan Younis had blown out the windows and doors, so she had moved to her mother-in-law’s house, hoping it would be safer.

But then, she said, they also received a warning to vacate their house, referring to a recorded message sent to thousands of mobile phones in Gaza on Thursday. “I could not wait,” she said, as she waited for her passport to be stamped. “I ran out without even getting my children’s shoes and sped to the crossing.”


Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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

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

8) Gaza Deaths Spike in 3rd Day of Air Assaults While Rockets Hit Israel
"As the air campaign entered its third day, the Palestinian death toll rose to at least 78, a majority of them civilians, according to officials in Gaza. No Israelis have been reported killed. ...The Palestine chapter of Defense for Children International, an independent child-rights organization, said 14 children aged 15 and younger had been killed in the airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday, including four toddlers. The group issued a list with the names and ages of those killed, saying its Gaza-based field worker had verified each death."
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — Palestinian deaths from Israel’s aerial attacks in Gaza rose sharply on Thursday, while militants there fired more than 180 rockets into Israel, reaching new targets spread across a vast area of the country.

The escalation appeared to increase the likelihood of a ground invasion and prompted the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to call urgently for a return to calm and a cease-fire.

“Today, we face the risk of an all-out escalation in Israel and Gaza, with the threat of a ground offensive still palpable — and preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing,” he told an emergency meeting of the Security Council. There were no signs that a cease-fire was imminent, and no signs that diplomats representing the antagonists were heeding Mr. Ban’s call for calm.Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, played an air-raid siren at the Council meeting to reflect what his country’s citizens hear every day. He called his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad Mansour, “a mouthpiece of Hamas.” Mr. Mansour blamed the underlying Israeli occupation, exhorting the Council to intervene and “salvage prospects for peace and security.”

In a televised statement after a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said, “While the campaign has gone as planned, further stages yet await us,” describing what was to come as “tough” and “complex.”

“We have struck hard at Hamas and the terrorists, and as long as the campaign continues we will strike at them harder,” he said.

President Obama spoke with Mr. Netanyahu by phone on Thursday from Air Force One while returning to Washington from a fund-raising trip to Colorado and Texas. A White House statement said that Mr. Obama expressed concern about further escalation of violence and told the Israeli leader that the United States remained “prepared to facilitate a cessation of hostilities” between Israel and the Palestinians. Aides said Mr. Obama also expressed condolences about the murder of three Israeli teenagers and concern about the beating of a teenage American citizen.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said that about 20,000 reservists had been called up and that preparations for a possible ground operation were being completed.

As the air campaign entered its third day, the Palestinian death toll rose to at least 78, a majority of them civilians, according to officials in Gaza. No Israelis have been reported killed.

Airstrikes overnight on a house in Khan Younis and an open-air beach cafe killed at least 15 Palestinians, and one airstrike hit a car used by a local news agency bearing media signs, killing the driver, Hamed Shehab, 27, the officials said. The Israeli military said it had also hit at least eight operatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in what it described as several precision strikes. The military said all had been involved in either the manufacture or firing of rockets.

The Palestine chapter of Defense for Children International, an independent child-rights organization, said 14 children aged 15 and younger had been killed in the airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday, including four toddlers. The group issued a list with the names and ages of those killed, saying its Gaza-based field worker had verified each death.

Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas leader, said on Palestinian radio, “What we need is for the international community to pressure the occupation to halt its aggression, which is unjustified.” He was referring to Israel.

The rocket fire into Israel reached Mitzpeh Ramon, a town deep in the Negev desert, and the Dead Sea area for the first time. More rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system or fell in open spaces in the Tel Aviv area of central Israel. Sirens wailed in Jerusalem in the early evening, and two rockets were intercepted above the city; two more fell in open areas, one on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Southern cities that have been the targets of rocket fire for years, like Ashdod and Beersheba, came under heavy rocket attack. The rockets caused extensive property damage but no serious injuries as Israelis ran for cover in shelters and fortified rooms with each siren.

Mr. Ban, while repeating his condemnation of indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, also warned Israel, saying “the excessive use of force and endangering of civilian lives are also intolerable.”

“Once again,” he said, “Palestinian civilians are caught between Hamas’s irresponsibility and Israel’s tough response.”

Israel says it is taking precautions in an effort to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza. The military says it warns the occupants of houses marked for destruction that airstrikes are coming by phoning residents then firing a flare or a missile without an explosive warhead onto the roof.

The Israeli military gave an initial explanation of what happened in one case when seven people died and 25 were wounded in the strike on the house of the Kaware family in Khan Younis on Tuesday. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said Thursday that the warnings had been given, and that the attack had commenced after the Israelis had seen people vacating the premises. In the interval between the last warning and the airstrike, people went back in, Colonel Lerner told reporters, saying it was too late to cancel the missile. “It is a tragedy indeed and not what we intended,” he said. A member of the family said earlier that neighbors had come to “form a human shield.”

The Israeli military said that the targeted houses belonged to Hamas members involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had been used as operation centers. If innocents are hit, Mr. Netanyahu said, “it is because Hamas is maliciously hiding behind Palestinian civilians.”

In Gaza, the mood was somber but defiant. Abu Tamer Ajour, 70, said the conflict had come at a bad time, with Hamas unable to pay full salaries to its 40,000 employees, among other hardships. “This aggression makes matters worse,” he said, “but victory will be for the Gaza people and our resistance.”

Riad Fawzi, 48, who is jobless, said he did not expect the clashes to last for long. “The Jews are not interested in more escalation,” he said, referring to Israel. “We are used to this thing, but they cannot endure the same way we endure,” he said. “Allah is with us.”


Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza, Somini Sengupta from the United Nations, and Michael D. Shear from Washington.
 
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

9) Obscure Rule Restricts Health Law’s Expansion of Care for Addicts
"In California, where only about 10 percent of the 18,155 beds at residential addiction treatment programs are in centers with 16 or fewer beds, officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Obama administration to soften the rule, saying in a February letter that 'California is severely limited in its ability to provide this benefit to Medi-Cal beneficiaries.'”
By

EAST HAZEL CREST, Ill. — On its surface, the Affordable Care Act seems like a boon for addiction treatment centers like the South Suburban Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, housed in a no-frills former hotel outside Chicago.

The law allowed states to expand Medicaid to many more low-income people, meaning that drug addicts and alcoholics who were previously ineligible could now receive coverage for substance abuse treatment, which the law has deemed an “essential health benefit.”

But there is a hitch: Under an obscure federal rule enacted almost 50 years ago, Medicaid covers residential addiction treatment in community-based programs only if they have 16 or fewer beds. The South Suburban Council’s main treatment program has 48. So the very people who might have flowed through its doors in search of care will not be coming. And the same problem faces many other centers, which typically are larger than 16 beds, experts say.The quirk in the law could have a significant impact on substance abuse treatment in Illinois and the 25 other states that have expanded Medicaid under the health care law. While millions of low-income addicts have been promised access to treatment through the expansion, the rule will most likely prevent many from entering residential programs, a more intensive form of care, even as heroin addiction is surging in many states.

In California, for instance, nine out of 10 addiction treatment beds are in programs too large to get Medicaid reimbursement.

“For some addicts, there is an undeniable and essential need for residential treatment,” said Allen Sandusky, the South Suburban Council’s chief executive. “The A.C.A. is going to mess that up badly unless this problem is acknowledged and addressed.”

The rule was intended to prevent Medicaid funds from covering treatment in state psychiatric hospitals, which were far more common when it was written in 1965. The federal government considered such treatment a state responsibility, and it included residential programs for substance abuse under the exclusion.

“The federal government basically said to the states, ‘We’re not going to pay for your institutional care,’ ” said Becky Vaughn, executive director of the State Associations of Addiction Services, which represents treatment providers. “Addiction services never should have been wrapped into that because we are not long term.”

Any change to the rule would have to come from Congress, because it is a provision of Medicaid law. Treatment centers and state Medicaid directors have called for changing or repealing it, but the odds are low, partly because Congress seems unwilling to tackle any health care issues this year, and partly because this one could prove expensive.

Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said most substance abuse treatment for new Medicaid enrollees was being provided on an outpatient basis. Such treatment usually consists of one or more group counseling sessions a week — enough for some, but inadequate for the severely ill, said Paul Samuels, director of the Legal Action Center, a nonprofit group in New York that advocates for people with addiction.

States and treatment providers are now scrambling to accommodate those who need residential treatment without running afoul of the 16-bed rule.

In Washington State, four existing treatment centers are downsizing to 16 beds and four new ones are opening at that size this summer to ensure at least some access — 128 beds — for new Medicaid enrollees. California and New York plan to seek waivers from the Obama administration that would allow Medicaid reimbursement for residential treatment in larger facilities.

Kentucky is trying to determine whether programs with multiple 16-bed units must be counted as one entity, and thus be subject to the rule.

Until now, many states have financed at least some residential treatment for the poor and uninsured with a mix of federal block grant and state funds. But Mr. Samuels said he feared that states may no longer want to foot the bill for addicts who enroll in Medicaid, which is paying 100 percent of costs for the expansion population.

Illinois, for one, has decided to stop using a mix of state general revenue and federal block grant funds for residential addiction treatment for people who have enrolled in Medicaid under the law, putting providers with more than 16 beds in a quandary.

Haymarket Center, a large treatment provider in Chicago, has eaten the costs of residential treatment for more than 40 newly eligible Medicaid enrollees so far this year, said Jeffrey Collord, a spokesman. “We are not turning people away right now,” he said. “But I don’t know how long we can continue to do that, to provide services and not get paid for them.”

The South Suburban Council has so far been able to treat new Medicaid beneficiaries in its smaller 16-bed unit by making it coed instead of for women only. But its larger 48-bed unit cannot accept clients on Medicaid.

So far the juggling has worked. But as more and more of South Suburban Council’s clients enroll in Medicaid, as is expected, the program will have to start turning away many of the new Medicaid enrollees — leaving it, paradoxically, unable to fill its beds, Mr. Sandusky said.

His program receives $143 per patient per day for what is typically a 28-day stay, or about $4,000. The reimbursement rate must also increase for programs like his to survive, he said.

Mr. Sandusky and other substance abuse experts say that many of their patients — typically referred by jails, courts, probation departments, emergency rooms and mental health agencies — need the stability and intensive care of residential treatment, and would probably fail in outpatient programs. Even intensive outpatient treatment, which may be several hours a day, several days a week, is not sufficient for many in this population, Mr. Sandusky said.

“The majority of our clients are in crisis,” Mr. Sandusky said. “They are the clients who present the most challenging issues for our communities and systems.”

Pete Kurpios, 41, started using heroin two years ago and was referred to the South Suburban Council by a hospital after he intentionally overdosed and spent days in a coma. “I’ve tried outpatient and that didn’t work out,” said Mr. Kurpios, who added that he had signed up for Medicaid but was still waiting for confirmation of enrollment. “I had too much time on my hands.”

Jim McCarthy, 53, who was also in treatment at the South Suburban Council last month, said his addiction to alcohol and heroin recently cost him his painting business. “Here you’ve got people watching over you when you might not be capable of watching over yourself,” he said.

In California, where only about 10 percent of the 18,155 beds at residential addiction treatment programs are in centers with 16 or fewer beds, officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Obama administration to soften the rule, saying in a February letter that “California is severely limited in its ability to provide this benefit to Medi-Cal beneficiaries.”

Now the state is pursuing a waiver that would, among other things, allow those newly eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to get residential treatment in larger programs. In the meantime, the state will provide a new intensive outpatient treatment benefit for the Medicaid expansion population, said Karen Baylor, deputy director of mental health and substance use disorder services at the California Department of Health Care Services.

In Ohio, Tracy Plouck, director of the state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said 72 percent of the state’s 2,538 addiction treatment beds were in programs too large for Medicaid reimbursement under the rule, known as the Institutions for Mental Disease exclusion. “It’s a serious access challenge,” she said. “I firmly believe there are providers that would increase their capacity but for concerns about the I.M.D.”

Larry Brand, 59, who recently completed a monthlong stay at the South Suburban Council, said outpatient treatment would have felt much riskier because he would not have had a round-the-clock support system. Mr. Brand, who is eligible for Medicaid under the health care law but has not yet signed up, said he had been in and out of prison after stealing to support his cocaine habit. He is determined not to return there.

“There’s no drugs and no alcohol here,” he said, “so it’s like a safe haven for me. If I would have stayed out there and tried to do it on my own, I can’t say what would have happened. But here I am today, clean and sober, and I’ve got a good start.”




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

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

 10) No Charges in Killing of Driver After Chase
By ANDREW SIDDONS

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

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

11) Wrongfully Convicted Man Takes $3 Million Settlement
"In Brooklyn alone, the convictions of seven men have been vacated this year, after the district attorney there began examining 90 troubled convictions. Filing claims against the state and the city is standard practice after a vacated conviction."
By

A man who spent 15 years in prison for a Brooklyn murder he did not commit agreed to a $3 million settlement approved on Thursday with New York State, one of the largest such settlements in recent history.

The settlement for the man, Jabbar Collins, is among a wave the state is expected to face. In Brooklyn alone, the convictions of seven men have been vacated this year, after the district attorney there began examining 90 troubled convictions. Filing claims against the state and the city is standard practice after a vacated conviction.

Judge Faviola A. Soto of the New York State Court of Claims approved the amount for Mr. Collins at a hearing.

Janet Polstein, an assistant attorney general for the state, said at the hearing, “This is reasonable compensation for the loss of liberty Mr. Collins suffered in state incarceration.”Mr. Collins was convicted of killing a rabbi in 1994 in the Williamsburg section of the borough. He always claimed he was innocent, and, while in prison, began researching the law and his case, filing records requests and appeals from behind bars and interviewing witnesses.

After a decade of working on his own, he hired a lawyer, Joel B. Rudin. Mr. Rudin filed a motion asking a federal judge to overturn the conviction, arguing that prosecutors had withheld key material and had knowingly presented false testimony at trial. The judge castigated the district attorney’s office for its handling of the trial; the district attorney’s office then agreed to clear Mr. Collins of the conviction and not to seek another prosecution.

Mr. Collins called the settlement “bittersweet,” saying he felt vindicated by it but wished that his mother, who died a year ago, were alive for it. He said he wanted to keep working on wrongful-conviction cases, and was considering going into the ministry. But the memory of prison lingers.

“I still have nightmares,” he said. “Waking up and thinking that I’m still there, that I was dreaming about this part of my life.”

Freed in 2010, Mr. Collins, 42, joined Mr. Rudin’s firm as a paralegal. Mr. Collins sued the state in 2011 under the Unjust Conviction Act, which requires people to show through “clear and convincing evidence that they were unjustly convicted.”

This year, Martin Tankleff, who served 17 years in prison for the murder of his parents before his conviction was overturned, got $3.3 million under the act.

The state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, proposed legislation in February that amended that act so that people who falsely confessed or who pleaded guilty — not just people who were convicted — but who were later exonerated could also sue the state.

Since 2000, the attorney general’s office under Mr. Schneiderman and his predecessors has settled 66 wrongful-conviction claims; the Collins settlement is the seventh largest.

Mr. Collins has a suit pending against the city on civil rights claims, also filed in 2011. That suit has involved the depositions of the former Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, and some of his subordinates. Mr. Rudin recently received approval from a judge to question Louis Scarcella, a retired detective whose methods have come under question; the current district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, is reviewing 57 of Mr. Scarcella’s cases.

Mr. Rudin said it was a strategic victory to secure the state claim before resolving the federal civil rights suit, because the state payout might have been reduced had a federal settlement already been reached. “Traditionally in settlement negotiations in wrongful-conviction cases, the city tries to exploit what it sees as the desperation of the plaintiff,” he said. “This gives Jabbar some financial security and makes him even more determined to see the city case through.”

Mr. Rudin said last month that the city and Mr. Collins had begun talking about a settlement but were far apart on a figure. A judge set an Oct. 20 trial date for the civil rights suit, while encouraging a settlement before then.

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

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

 12) Despite a Pledge by Samsung, Child Labor Proves Resilient
By

DONGGUAN, China — After work, the three teenage girls giggle and pull at one another’s hair. But when questioned, they admit their common secret: They use false papers to work illegally here at the factory that makes mobile phone components for one of the world’s biggest brands, Samsung.

They are 14 and 15 years old, below the legal working age in China. A few weeks ago, they were living at home with their parents in a small village a six-hour drive from here, finishing middle school.

“We also worked at a factory last summer,” said one of the girls, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of getting fired. “But it was much worse. We were making Christmas ornaments, and some workers got huge blisters on their hands.”

The presence of at least three child workers at the factory in southern China casts a cloud over the labor practices of Samsung and its suppliers.A little more than a week ago, Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, said in an annual review of conditions at its manufacturing centers that it had found no evidence of under-age workers or child laborers in its global supply chain. In recent years, Samsung has promoted its efforts to monitor and evaluate suppliers and manufacturing operations around the world, noting that the policies were aimed at protecting workers and preventing minors from being hired.

For instance, even though the legal working age in China is 16, Samsung considers that too young, and so its suppliers are instructed not to hire workers under 18. To ensure they do not cheat, Samsung says, it has forced all of them to install a sophisticated facial recognition system on factory sites.

But on Tuesday morning, the three young girls met with a reporter from The New York Times after they were initially identified by the labor rights group China Labor Watch. Near their factory here in Dongguan, they explained how easy it was to work for a company that supplies Samsung.

According to the girls, they were part of a “labor dispatch system” that often funnels child laborers to factories during the summer to help meet a surge in orders that comes just ahead of the fall and winter shopping seasons in the United States and Europe. They were hired as temporary workers, they said, and paid through an agency that has recruitment channels in poor regions.

After they told their story, the three girls locked arms and walked past the security guards and into the Shinyang Electronics factory, which employs more than 600 workers in Dongguan, one of China’s biggest manufacturing centers.

“As part of our pledge against child labor, Samsung routinely conducts inspections to monitor our suppliers to ensure they follow our commitment,” Samsung said in a statement. “We are urgently looking into the latest allegations and will take appropriate measures in accordance with our policies to prevent any cases of child labor in our suppliers.”

The situation at the factory in Dongguan underscores some of the challenges multinational corporations face in sourcing goods from here. Wages and working conditions in China have steadily improved over the last decade. But ensuring that supplier factories comply with guidelines set by global brands, as well as China’s labor laws, is difficult, even though larger factories are regularly audited by outside inspectors.

Many global brands have struggled with labor problems in their Chinese operations. In the last few years, Apple has come under scrutiny in China over labor and safety problems, notably a spate of worker suicides and unrest at facilities run by its biggest contract manufacturer, the Taiwanese company Foxconn.

Apple declined to comment for this article, but the company has said it has taken steps to address labor issues in its supply chain, including deeper audits on its partners and a program that punishes suppliers that hire under-age workers.

Now, Samsung — whose smartphones are popular worldwide — is also the target of labor rights activists. In a report released on Thursday, China Labor Watch, which is based in New York, accused Samsung of allowing a supplier in Dongguan to hire under-age workers, cheating those workers on pay, denying them overtime wages and failing to give them government-mandated labor contracts.

“After allegedly inspecting hundreds of Chinese suppliers, Samsung did not find one child worker,” China Labor Watch said in a statement released on Thursday. “Yet in just one Samsung supplier factory, C.L.W. has uncovered several children employed without labor contracts, working 11 hours per day and only being paid for 10 of those hours.”

For the last decade, labor rights groups have tried to draw attention to labor abuse and health and safety violations in some of China’s biggest factories. They often send young activists to work undercover in the workshops, document conditions, secretly interview workers and examine their pay stubs and employment contracts.

In the Samsung case, a young activist at China Labor Watch was hired by the Dongguan factory and began collecting evidence and making friends with workers suspected of being under-age. According to the account by the labor rights group, the activist ate with the three young girls, and also with two young boys who were believed to be under-age, and secretly recorded their conversations.The activist also took photographs of conditions inside the Shinyang facility, which is owned and managed by a company in South Korea. The Dongguan factory now works exclusively for Samsung to produce plastic components for mobile phones.

A Shinyang spokeswoman, who gave her name as Ms. Fang, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that Samsung audited the company on June 25 and that the auditors found no evidence of workers below age 18, let alone 16.

Samsung says in its own exhaustive audits of hundreds of factories in China during the last two years that third-party auditors found not a single under-age worker. But a Samsung spokeswoman says the company is now conducting its own investigation into the Shinyang facility.

According to its annual sustainability report, which includes a review of human rights and labor conditions at its global centers, Samsung says it has “zero tolerance” for child labor and could “suspend transactions” with suppliers that do not comply with its rules.

In its 2014 report, released on June 30, Samsung acknowledged weaknesses in its supply chain. For instance, the report said that a majority of the facilities Samsung had audited in China failed to comply with the country’s law on the maximum hours of overtime workers are permitted, which is 36 hours a month. The company said it was trying to rectify the situation.

If Samsung verifies that at least three young girls were working at its supplier factory, experts say that would cast some doubts on what the company considers stringent audits, including the use of facial recognition software to determine whether the faces of workers matched their government-issued identity cards.

According to the three young girls, they began working at Shinyang on June 30, just five days after the Shinyang factory says it was audited. They said they were hired as “temporary workers,” given fake ID cards and asked to work the most difficult shift, 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., and then to put in an additional three hours of overtime, six days a week.

The work was grueling but tolerable, they said. The girls complained that they were paid about $1.20 an hour because they had been hired by a middleman or “labor dispatch company.” A typical worker, they said, was paid $1.45 an hour. Labor rights activists say this is an increasingly common way factories reduce costs and skirt the labor law.

China Labor Watch said the girls were allowed to avoid the facial recognition system, which is supposed to help prevent under-age workers. And when asked how the factory could provide them with false government-issued ID cards, one of the girls said: “The factory can just borrow real identification cards from other factories to register us. And the system for checking employees as they enter the factory is not that strict.”

Stephanie Yifan Yang contributed research and Brian X. Chen contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

13) Thousands of Gaza Civilians Flee After Israeli Warning
"The Health Ministry said at least 160 Palestinians, including about 135 civilians - among them some 30 children, have been killed six days of warfare, and more than 1,000 have been wounded."
By REUTERS

GAZA/JERUSALEM — Thousands fled their homes in a Gaza town on Sunday after Israel warned them to leave ahead of threatened attacks on rocket-launching sites, on the sixth day of an offensive that Palestinian officials said has killed at least 160 people.

Militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip kept up rockets salvoes deep into the Jewish state and the worst bout of Israel-Palestinian bloodshed in two years showed no signs of abating, and Western foreign ministers meeting on Sunday said a ceasefire was an urgent priority.

Israeli forces dropped leaflets into the town of Beit Lahiya near Gaza's northern border with Israel. They read: "Those who fail to comply with the instructions to leave immediately will endanger their lives and the lives of their families. Beware."

The Israeli military told the residents of three of Beit Lahiya's 10 neighborhoods to get out of the town of 70,000 by midday on Sunday. U.N. officials said some 4,000 people had fled south to eight schools run by the world body in Gaza City.

A senior Israeli military officer, in a telephone briefing with foreign reporters, said Israel would "strike with might" in the Beit Lahiya area from the late evening hours on Sunday.

He did not say if this would include an expansion of an air and naval offensive into a ground operation in the north of the narrow, densely populated Mediterranean enclave.

"The enemy has built rocket infrastructure in-between the houses (in Beit Lahiya)," the officer said. "He wants to trap me into an attack and into hurting civilians."

At schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, Beit Lahiya residents arrived in donkey carts filled with children, luggage and mattresses, while others came by car or taxi. One man, still in his pajamas, said some inhabitants had received phone calls warning them to clear out.

"What could we do? We had to run in order to save the lives of our children," said Salem Abu Halima, 25, a father of two.

The Gaza Interior Ministry, in a statement on Hamas radio, dismissed the Israeli warnings as "psychological warfare" and instructed those who left their homes to return and others to stay put.

Dozens of houses in parts of Beit Lahiya were leveled by Israeli bulldozers during a month-long Gaza war in late 2008 and early 2009. Israel says such structures provide cover for militants and rocket launchers.

The leaflets marked the first time Israel had warned Palestinians to vacate dwellings in such a wide area. Previous warnings, by telephone or so-called "knock-on-the-door" missiles without explosive warheads, had been directed at individual homes slated for attack.

135 PALESTINIAN CIVILIAN DEATHS

A Palestinian woman and a girl aged 3 were killed in Israeli air strikes early on Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Hours before, 17 people were killed when the house of Gaza's police chief was bombed from the air - the single deadliest attack of Israel's offensive. Palestinian officials originally said 18 were dead, but doctors later revised the figure.

The Health Ministry said at least 160 Palestinians, including about 135 civilians - among them some 30 children, have been killed six days of warfare, and more than 1,000 have been wounded.

Hostilities along the Israel-Gaza frontier first intensified last month after Israeli forces arrested hundreds of Hamas activists in the Israeli-occupied West Bank following the abduction there of three Jewish teenagers who were later found killed. A Palestinian youth was then killed in Jerusalem in a suspected revenge attack by Israelis. Despite intensified Israeli military action - which included a commando raid overnight in what was Israel's first reported ground action in Gaza during the current fighting - militants continued to launch rocket after rocket across the border.

A long-range burst on Sunday morning triggered air raid sirens at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion international airport, which has not been struck in the hostilities and where flights have been operating normally, and some city suburbs.

On Saturday night, Hamas - the Islamist movement that rules Gaza - made good on a threat to send rockets streaking toward Tel Aviv at 9 p.m. (2.00 p.m. EDT) and other areas in heavily populated central Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis sought shelter as Palestinians in the streets of Gaza City cheered the launchings, the biggest strike yet on the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.

Those rockets and the ones unleashed on Sunday were intercepted by the Israeli-built, and partly U.S.-funded, Iron Dome missile defense system that has proved effective against Hamas's most powerful weaponry.

ISRAELI BEACHGOERS WATCH AS ROCKETS SHOT DOWN

No one has been killed by the more than 800 rockets the Israeli military said has been fired by Palestinians since the offensive began. During Saturday night's barrage, customers in Tel Aviv beachfront cafes shouted their approval as they watched the projectiles being shot out of the sky.

"We will continue to act with patience, forbearance, with determination, responsibility and aggression to achieve the goal of the campaign - restoring calm for a long period by dealing a significant blow to Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks after meeting his cabinet.

"We don't know when this operation will be over, it may take a long time and we need your support and also your discipline," he said in a message to the Israeli public.

International pressure on both sides for a return to calm has increased, with the U.N. Security Council calling for a cessation of hostilities and Western foreign ministers meeting on Sunday to weigh strategy.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will travel to the Middle East on Monday and meet Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, German media reported.

Germany mediated a prisoner swap in 2011 in which an Israeli soldier held by Hamas was freed in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Israel.

Israel says a ground invasion of Gaza remains an option, and it has already mobilized more than 30,000 reservists to do so, but most attacks have so far been from the air, hitting some 1,200 targets in the territory.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius spoke of "a dangerous escalation" between Israel and Hamas and told reporters before talks in Vienna with his U.S., German and British counterparts that securing a ceasefire was "an absolute priority".

He and British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there was an urgent need to reinstate the truce struck in 2012.

Giving details of the naval commando operation early on Sunday, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said four members of the force were wounded in exchanges of fire with militants but the long-range rocket launching site they attacked was hit.

Hamas said its fighters had fired at the Israeli force offshore, preventing them from landing. Lerner said the forces had "completed their mission".

Hundreds of mourners attended the funerals on Sunday of the 17 Palestinians killed in the bombing of Gaza police chief Taysee Al-Basth's home. "With our souls and blood we will redeem the martyrs!" the crowd chanted as armed men fired in the air.

A Hamas source said Batsh was in critical condition and that all the dead were members of his family.

Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said 45 people were wounded in the bombing. An Israeli teenager was wounded on Sunday by a rocket that struck the southern town of Ashkelon, emergency services said.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Ari Rabinovitch and Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, John Irish, Fredrik Dahl and Louis Charbonneau in Vienna; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


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

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

14) As Israel Hits Mosque and Clinic, Air Campaign’s Risks Come Home
By

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — As Israel’s air war against Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza entered its sixth day on Saturday, a pair of bombings threw the difficulties of the campaign into painful relief: Israel bombed a mosque, which its aerial photos indicated was harboring a weapons cache, and a center for the disabled, killing two residents and wounding three, as well as a caretaker.

A separate strike on the house of a police commander killed at least 18 people, the highest toll so far this conflict, bringing the total number of dead to at least 140, Palestinian officials said.

In response, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, garnering much attention despite causing no deaths or injuries, as three of them were intercepted. There were also signs of imminent escalation as the Israeli military said it was going to send messages to northern Gaza residents to vacate their homes “for their own safety,” amid preparations for a possible invasion.

The Interior Ministry in Gaza urged Palestinians to ignore the warnings, calling them psychological warfare.

But the Israeli military said early Sunday that four soldiers were slightly wounded during a brief incursion into northern Gaza to destroy a rocket launching site, according to The Associated Press. It is the first time that Israeli ground troops are known to have entered Gaza in this offensive, The A.P. said, but the raid was carried out by special forces and did not appear to be the beginning of a broad ground offensive.

The Israeli bombing of the center for the disabled, the Mabaret Palestine Society here in northern Gaza, occurred just before dawn, when a missile crashed through the roof and exploded. Because it was the weekend, only five of the 19 severely disabled residents were at the center, while the rest were with their families, said Jamila Elaiwa, who founded the center 20 years ago.

She spoke at Al Shifa hospital’s burn unit, while she was visiting the wounded, including Mai Hamada, 30, and Salwa Abu al-Qomssan, 53, the caretaker, both of them with severe burns. Two more residents were in intensive care. The dead were identified as Ula Wisha, 31, and Suha Abusada, 39, whose family said she had been born severely disabled and unable to speak.

Muhammad Abu al-Qomssan, 32, the caretaker’s eldest son, said that his mother “has a soft heart,” and felt fortunate to have found this new job only three weeks ago. She had been to predawn prayers and told him she had arrived only a few minutes before the bomb struck, he said.

Ms. Elaiwa, 59, said that her center was well-known in the neighborhood and that it had been in the same building for almost a decade. She said she had no idea why it would be bombed. “No one lived there except us,” she said. “There was no one else in the building.”

At the site, neighbors picked through the rubble of modest medical equipment and scattered children’s books, from the small neighborhood children’s library Ms. Elaiwa ran. There was a seared copy of “Jane Eyre,” condensed, in English with Arabic translation, and an English-language copy of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”

Neighbors like Yasir Abu Shoodq, 32, stared up at the sky through the holes the missile cut through the roof and each floor before making a crater in the ground. Children picked up the chunks of sharp steel from the crater and made off with them.

Mr. Abu Shoodq said, and Ms. Elaiwa confirmed, that there had first been a warning rocket, “a knock on the roof,” a few minutes before the missile hit. “But no one understood what it meant,” she said. “No one could imagine the center would be a target for anyone.” In any case, she said, the severity of the residents’ disabilities would have prevented them from fleeing on their own.

Azzedin Ali, 26, another neighbor, said angrily: “They are bankrupt of targets and of pity. What would the handicapped have been resisting? This is the enemy striking civilians in the places they think they are safe.”

As he spoke, perhaps a mile away, a rocket was launched from Gaza toward Israel, its contrail slightly wobbly in a hot, hazy sky.

In a rare Saturday briefing for reporters at Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, a senior military official said, when asked, that the army was looking into what happened at the center for the disabled. “A group is investigating now what was the target, what was the intelligence,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military protocol.

The briefing was an apparent effort to rebuff growing international alarm at the rising death toll from the airstrikes in Gaza and the calls for restraint.

The official spoke of the difficulties the air force faced in minimizing collateral damage in the densely populated environment of Gaza, describing the mission as “very challenging,” and showed video clips from the air that he said demonstrated the military’s care in targeting.

One clip showed a mission that was aborted because civilians, including children, were spotted in the vicinity of the target. Another showed a strike on a three-story house the official said belonged to a Hamas brigade commander in a crowded neighborhood of Khan Younis, which set off huge secondary explosions, indicating a weapons cache.

“Hamas’s operational infrastructure is not in specific military camps or posts,” he said. A building with two floors may have a weapons storage site on the first floor, he said, “and above it, regular families.”

At the mosque that was bombed on Saturday, in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, only the minaret was left standing. Young men joined the junior imam, Muhammad Hamad, 25, in digging through the rubble to save copies of the Quran and other religious works.

But this attack, one of two mosques hit on Saturday, was no mistake. Here Israeli intelligence was convinced, and issued photographs to support its case, that the mosque also served as “a Hamas rocket cache and a gathering point for militants,” the army’s spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said in a statement.Mr. Hamad, the young imam, denied categorically that any weapons had been in the mosque, but it was impossible for an untrained eye to tell, in part because it was considered too dangerous to try to enter the collapsed structure. “That charge is baseless,” he said. “This is the house of God.”

Neighbors said that there had been a “knock on the roof,” followed by the bomb a few minutes later, and that only four people were wounded because it was still too early for the predawn Ramadan prayers.

Mr. Hamad said he had found a Quran open to a page with a particular sura that he felt had special meaning. “Victory is imminent for those who remain steadfast,” he read.

The strike on the house of the police commander killed people in the house, in eastern Gaza City, as well as people coming out of a nearby mosque after evening prayers. The apparent target, Gen. Tayseer al-Batsh, was seriously wounded, medics said.

A rocket strike outside an apartment building in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood killed six Palestinians. The son of a local Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, said the attack had targeted his aunt’s home and two of the dead were her children.

The United Nations Security Council issued a statement on Saturday calling on both sides to return to a 2012 cease-fire. The statement did not point a finger, but called for “respect for international law including the protection of civilians.”

The statement, endorsed by all 15 members of the Council, was largely symbolic; it does not have the force of a resolution, which Arab countries have called for.

The difficulties for Hamas and its allies in Gaza were also on display on Saturday as they fired at least 90 rockets at Israel, causing no deaths or injuries, two of them even falling into the West Bank towns of Hebron and Bethlehem.

In its most audacious attack yet, the military wing of Hamas announced at 8 p.m. that it would fire rockets at Tel Aviv an hour later. The news set off a flurry of air-raid sirens and people running to shelters but the rockets caused no injuries or damage, according to initial reports.

Hamas said it fired 10 J-80 rockets at Tel Aviv and central Israel. At least three of them were intercepted above the city while others fell in open areas.

Earlier, a rocket struck a residential neighborhood of Netivot, a southern Israeli town, causing property damage.

At least two rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel late Saturday, the military said. In response, Israeli forces fired artillery rounds toward the launch site in Lebanon.


Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Isabel Kershner from Tel Aviv, Nayef Hashlamoun from Hebron, and Somini Sengupta from New York.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS


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

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

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

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

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

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

Transport Workers Protest Oakland Schools Censorship of Mumia

Fresh from defeating Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department because he served for a period as Mumia’s attorney, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is attacking an Oakland teacher’s lesson plan that asks students to compare the censorship of Martin Luther King’s later, thoroughly radical positions with the censorship of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s prison writings.  As a result of this intimidation from the FOP, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) took down an entire web site—Urban Dreams—which contained this as well as educational material on a diverse range of issues!

The following is an open letter by the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee protesting this outrageous act of police-state censorship . . .

Stop the Censorship!
Restore the Urban Dreams web site!

Open letter to Oakland School Board members:
May 28, 2014

Members of the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, including (among others) the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), BART workers and AC Transit bus drivers, were appalled to hear that the Oakland Unified School District succumbed to pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and the right-wing Fox News by shutting down the educational Urban Dreams website, which includes material on Mumia Abu-Jamal and Martin Luther King Jr.

In effect, academic freedom was pushed to a back seat of the bus. This censorship is wrong. The Urban Dreams website must be restored immediately for all to freely visit and learn.

If not, OUSD administration has joined in with the FOP’s vendetta against Mumia Abu-Jamal. The target of the FOP-Fox News smears was a lesson plan by Oakland teacher Craig Gordon asking students to compare the media’s wall of silence on Martin Luther King’s militant anti-corporate, anti-war campaigning with its wall of silence on Mumia’s writings.

To take that lesson plan down, OUSD took down the entire Urban Dreams website, a website containing many rich and evocative teacher-developed lessons, of which Gordon’s is one. Several of these lesson plans were still in active use by teachers in Oakland and elsewhere. [Urban Dreams was initially set up under a grant from the federal Dept. of Education in 1999-2004].

Academic freedom was pushed to the back of the bus.
This censorship is wrong!

Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black journalist called the “voice of the voiceless,” was framed for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman over 30 years ago and sentenced to death. Only recently was this innocent man removed from death row.

Fifteen years ago, in the best tradition of the abolitionists, Oakland teachers initiated a teach-in on the plight of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the vestige of slavery, the death penalty. Indeed, Craig Gordon was one of the organizers of that teach-in.

Following that stellar example in 1999, striking school teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, demanded his release from prison. As well, longshore workers shutdown all West Coast ports and led a march of 25,000 strong in San Francisco calling for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Workers in the Bay Area, especially here in Oakland, have a long and proud tradition of defending Black victims of the racist state oppression – from Martin Luther King Jr. to Angela Davis to Huey Newton to Oscar Grant.

Oakland teachers have an obligation to teach that history
and students have a right to learn from that history!

The Urban Dreams website must be restored immediately
for all to freely visit and learn!

Contact Jack Heyman, chair of the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, at TransportSolidarity@yahoo.com.

The statement above was published at:

http://sfbayview.com/2014/stop-the-censorship-restore-the-urban-dreams-website/

This message from: the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

www.laboractionmumia.org

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

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

 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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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


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

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

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.
 
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

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
 

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

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

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

 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/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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

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

What you Didn't know about NYPD's Stop and Frisk program !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rfJHx0Gj6ys#at=990

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

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

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

Wealth Inequality in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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)

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

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



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



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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

WITNESS GAZA

http://www.witnessgaza.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To unsubscribe go to: bauaw2003-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com


Posted by at No comments:
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment