Aug. 2 National March on the White House Stop the Massacre in Gaza!
Saturday, Aug. 2, 1:00pm Gather at the White House Washington, D.C. Transportation is being organized from all over the country
Yesterday,
Israeli Defense Forces deliberately targeted a group of children
playing soccer on a Gaza beach, killing four from the same family and
maiming the others—another war crime committed against the Palestinian
people.
Join thousands of people in a National March on the
White House on Saturday, August 2 at 1:00pm to condemn the Israeli
massacre in Gaza.
We have been in the streets every day in cities
around the country. What is needed now is a massive National March on
Washington.
Israel receives $4 billion in “aid” from the United
States each year. This money is being used to commit war crimes against
the Palestinian people in Gaza. We are demanding that all U.S aid to
Israel be ended now!
More than 200 people in Gaza have been
killed and more than 1,500 have been wounded from Israeli bombs and
missiles. This has to end!
Join us to demand:
Stop the massacre in Gaza! End the blockade of Gaza! End all U.S. aid to Israel! End the colonial occupation! Co-sponsors:
ANSWER Coalition; American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); American Muslim Alliance (AMA);
Al-Awda: Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Al-Awda: Palestine Right
to Return Coalition - New York; Code Pink; Muslim Legal Fund of America;
World Can't Wait; Partership for Civil Justice; MAS Immigrant Justice
Center; UNAC - United National Antiwar Coalition; Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
Jews Say: End the War on Gaza — No Aid to Apartheid Israel!
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return, July 22, 2014
On
July 12, 2014, Gaza civil society issued an urgent appeal for
solidarity, asking: "How many of our lives are dispensable enough until
the world takes action? How much of our blood is sufficient?"
As
Jews of conscience, we answer by unequivocally condemning Israel's
ongoing massacre in Gaza, whose victims include hundreds of civilians,
children, entire families, the elderly, and the disabled. This latest
toll adds to the thousands Israel has killed and maimed since its
supposed withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
In response to this crisis, we urgently reaffirm our support for a ban on all military and other aid to Israel.
In
1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the Vietnam War with his
famous declaration: “For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling
under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
Today, *we* cannot be
silent as the “Jewish state" -- armed to the teeth by the U.S. and its
allies -- wages yet another brutal war on the Palestinian people.
Apartheid Israel does not speak for us, and we stand with Gaza as we
stand with all of Palestine.
In the face of incessant
pro-Israel propaganda, we heed Malcolm X's warning: “If you're not
careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being
oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
For
Israel's relentless war on Gaza is no more an act of "self-defense"
than such infamous massacres as Wounded Knee (1890), Guernica (1937),
the Warsaw Ghetto (1942), Deir Yassin (1948), My Lai (1968), Soweto
(1976), Sabra and Shatila (1982), or Lebanon (2006).
Rather, it
is but the latest chapter in more than a century of Zionist
colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleaning, racism, and genocide --
including Israel's very establishment through the uprooting and
displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians during the 1947-1948 Nakba.
Indeed, eighty percent of the 1.8 million people sealed into Gaza are
refugees.
Like any colonial regime, Israel uses resistance to
such policies as an excuse to terrorize and collectively punish the
indigenous population for its very existence. But scattered rockets,
fired from Gaza into land stolen from Palestinians in the first place,
are merely a response to this systemic injustice.
To confront
the root cause of this violence, we call for the complete dismantling of
Israel's apartheid regime, throughout historic Palestine -- from the
River to the Sea. With that in mind, we embrace the 2005 Palestinian
call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which
demands:
* An end to Israeli military occupation of the 1967 territories
* Full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel
* Right of return for Palestinian refugees, as affirmed by UN resolution 194
Initial Signers (list in formation; organizations,
schools and other affiliations shown for identification only:
*Co-founder, Jews
for Palestinian Right of Return) ; Avigail Abarbanel,
Psychotherapist; editor, Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish
Peace Activists (2012, Cambridge Scholars), Inverness, Scotland; Noa Abend,
Boycott From Within; Stephen Aberle, Independent Jewish Voices; Vancouver,
BC; Lisa Albrecht, Ph.D. Social Justice Program, University of Minnesota; Anya
Achtenberg, novelist and poet; teacher; activist; International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network; Mike Alewitz, Associate Professor, Central CT State
Unversity; Artistic Director, Labor Art & Mural Project; Zalman Amit, Distinguished
Professor Emeritus; Author, Israeli Rejectionism; Anthony
Arnove, International Socialist Organization; Gabriel Ash, International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network, Switzerland; Ted Auerbach, Brooklyn for Peace; Anna
Baltzer, author and organizer; Ronnie Barkan, Co-founder, Boycott
from Within, Tel-Aviv; Judith Bello, Administrative Committee, United
National Antiwar Coalition; Lawrence Boxall, Independent Jewish Voices, Canada;
Vancouver Ecosocialist Group; Linda Benedikt, writer Munich, Germany; Nora
Barrows-Friedman, journalist; Oakland; Prof. Jonathan Beller, Humanities and
Media Studies Graduate Program in Media Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Medea
Benjamin, co-founder, CODEPINK; Rica Bird, Joint Founder, Merseyside Jews for
Peace and Justice; Audrey Bomse, Co-chair, National Lawyers Guild Palestine
Subcommittee; Prof. Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, UC
Berkeley; Lenni Brenner, Author, Zionism In The Age Of The Dictators;
Elizabeth Block, Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto ON; Max Blumenthal, Author, Goliath:
Life and Loathing in Greater Israel; and Senior Writer for Alternet.org; Mary
P. Buchwald, Jewish Voice for Peace-New York; Monique Buckner, BDS South
Africa; Maia Brown, Health and Human Rights Project-Seattle & Stop Veolia
Seattle; Estee Chandler, Jewish Voice for Peace, Los Angeles; Rick
Chertoff, L..A. Jews for Peace; Prof. Marjorie Cohn, Thomas Jefferson
School of Law; past president, National Lawyers Guild; Ally Cohen, Ramallah,
Palestine; International Solidarity Movement media coordinator; Ruben Rosenberg
Colorni, Youth for Palestine, Netherlands; Mike Cushman, Convenor, Jews for
Boycotting Israeli Goods (UK); Margaretta D'arcy, Irish actress, writer,
playwright, and peace-activist; Natalie Zemon Davis, Historian; Warren Davis,
labor and political activist, Philadelphia, PA; Eron Davidson, film maker; Judith
Deutsch, Independent Jewish Voices Canada; Science for Peace; Roger Dittmann, Professor
of Physics, Emeritus California State University, Fullerton; President,
Scholars and Scientists without Borders Executive Council, World Federation of
Scientific Workers; Gordon Doctorow, Ed.D., Canada; Mark Elf, Jews Sans
Frontieres, London, UK; Hedy Epstein, Nazi Holocaust survivor and human rights
activist; St. Louis, MO; Marla Erlien, New York NY; Shelley Ettinger,
writer/activist, New York, NY; Inge Etzbach, Human Rights Activist, Café
Palestina NY; Richard Falk, Professor of International Law, Emeritus, Princeton
University; Former UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine, 2008-2014; Malkah
B. Feldman, Jewish Voice for Peace and recent delegate to Palestine with
American Jews For A Just Peace; Deborah Fink, Co-Founder, Jews for Boycotting
Israeli Goods UK; Joel Finkel, Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago; Sylvia Finzi,
JfjfP; Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost, EJJP. (Germany); Maxine
Fookson, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner; Jewish Voice for
Peace, Portland OR-; Richard Forer, Author, Breakthrough:
Transforming Fear Into Compassion - A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine;
Sid Frankel, Associate Professor, University of Manitoba; Prof. Cynthia
Franklin, Co-Editor, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, University of
Hawai’i; Racheli Gai, Jewish Voice for Peace; Herb Gamberg, Independent
Jewish Voices, Canada ; Ruth Gamberg, Independent Jewish Voices,
Canada ; Lee Gargagliano, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; Cheryl
Gaster, social justice activist and human right lawyer, Toronto ON; Alisa
Gayle-Deutsch, American/Canadian Musician and Anti-Israeli Apartheid Activist; Jack
Gegenberg, Professor of Mathematics, University of New Brunswick,
Fredericton NB; Prof. Terri Ginsberg, film and media scholar, New York; David
Glick, psychotherapist; Jewish Voice for Peace; Sherna Berger Gluck, Emerita
Professor, CSULB; Israel Divestment Campaign; Neta Golan, Ramallah, Palestine;
Jews Against Genocide; Co-founder, International Solidarity Movement.; Tsilli
Goldenberg, teacher, Jerusalem, Israel; Steve Goldfield, Ph.D.; Sue Goldstein,
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Canada; Marty Goodman, former
Executive Board member, Transport Workers Union Local 100; Socialist Action; Rabbi
Lynn Gottlieb, Freeman Fellow, Fellowship of Reconciliation; Hector Grad,
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Spain; Prof. Jesse Greener,
University of Laval; Cathy Gulkin, Filmmaker, Toronto ON; Ira Grupper,
Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY; Jeff Halper, The Israeli Committee
Against House demolitions (ICAHD); Larry Haiven, Independent Jewish Voices
Canada, Halifax; Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, publisher, Germany; Stanley Heller, The
Struggle Video News TSVN; Shir Hever, Jewish Voice for Just Peace, Germany; Deborah
Hrbek, media and civil rights lawyer, NLG-NYC; Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass, Jews
for Palestinian Right of Return; Adam Horowitz, Co-Editor, Mondoweiss; Gilad
Isaacs, Economist, Wits University.; Selma James, International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network; Jake Javanshir, Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto; Riva
Joffe, Jews Against Zionism; Val Jonas, attorney, Miami Beach; Sima Kahn,
MD; President of the board, Kadima Reconstructionist Community; Yael Kahn,
Israeli anti-apartheid activist; Michael Kalmanovitz, International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network (UK); Dan Kaplan, AFT Local 1493; Susan Kaplan, J.D.
National Lawyers Guild ; Danny Katch, activist and author; Bruce Katz,
President, Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU), Montreal, Canada; Lynn Kessler,
Ph.D., MPH, psychologist/social justice activist; Janet Klecker, Sonomans for
Justice & Peace for Palestine, Sonoma CA; Prof. David Klein, California
State University, Northridge; USACBI; Emma Klein, Jewish Voice for Peace,
Seattle WA; Sara Kershnar, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; Harry
Kopyto, Legal activist Toronto ON; Richard Koritz, veteran postal trade
unionist and former member of North Carolina Human Relations Commission; Yael
Korin, PhD., Scientist at UCLA; Campaign to End IsraelI Apartheid, Southern
California; Dennis Kortheuer, CSULB, Israel Divestment Campaign; Steve
Kowit, Professor Emeritus, Jewish Voice for Peace; Toby Kramer, International
Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; Jason Kunin, Independent Jewish Voices Canada; Dr.
David Landy, Trinity College, Dublin; Jean Léger, Coalition pour la
Justice et la Paix en Palestine, membre de la Coalition BDS Québec et de
Palestiniens et Juifs Unis; Lynda Lemberg, Educators for Peace and Justice,
Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto ON; David Letwin,* activist and teacher,
Al-Awda NY; Michael Letwin,* former President, Association of Legal Aid
Attorneys/UAW Local 2325; USACBI; Al-Awda NY; Les Levidow, Jews for Boycotting
Israeli Goods (J-BIG), UK; Corey Levine, Human Rights Activist,
Writer; National Steering Committee, Independent Jewish
Voices Canada; Joseph Levine, Professor of Philosophy, University of
Massachusetts Amherst; Lesley Levy, Independent Jewish Voices, Montreal; Mich
Levy, teacher, Oakland CA; Abby Lippman, Professor Emerita; activist; Montreal;
Brooke Lober, PhD candidate, University of Arizona, Gender and Women's Studies
Department; Antony Loewenstein, journalist, author and Guardian columnist; Jennifer
Loewenstein, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Wisconsin,
Madison; Alex Lubin, Professor of American Studies, University of New Meixco; Andrew
Lugg, Professor Emeritus, University of Ottawa, Canada; David Makofsky, Jewish
Voice for Peace, Research Anthropologist; Harriet Malinowitz, Professor of
English, Long Island University, Brooklyn; Mike Marqusee, Author, If I
Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew; Miriam Marton, JD; Dr.
Richard Matthews. independent scholar, London ON; Daniel L. Meyers, Former
President National Lawyers Guild-NYC; Linda Milazzo, Writer/Activist/Educator,
Los Angeles; Eva Steiner Moseley, Holocaust refugee, Massachusetts Peace Action
board member and Palestine/Israel Working Group; Dr. Dorothy Naor, retired
teacher, Herzliah, Israel; Marcy Newman, independent scholar; Author; The
Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans; Alex Nissen, Women in Black; Dr.
Judith Norman, San Antonio, TX; Henry Norr, retired journalist, Berkeley CA; Michael
Novick, Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles/People Against Racist Terror; Prof.
Bertell Ollman, NYU; Karin Pally, Santa Monica, CA; Prof. Ilan Pappé, Israeli
historian and socialist activist; Karen Platt, Jewish Voice for Peace, Albany
CA; Dr. Susan Pashkoff, Jews Against Zionism, London UK; Miko Peled, writer,
activist; Author, The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine ;
Prof. Gabriel Piterberg, UCLA; Mitch Podolak, Founder, Winnipeg Folk Festival
and Vancouver Folk Music Festival; Karen Pomer,* granddaughter of Henri B. van
Leeuwen, Dutch anti-Zionist leader and Bergen-Belsen survivor; Lenny Potash,
Los Angeles CA; Fabienne Presentey, Independent Jewish
Voices, Montréal; Diana Ralph, Independent Jewish Voices Canada; Roland
Rance, Jews Against Zionism, London; Karen Ranucci, Independent Journalist,
Democracy Now!; Ana Ratner, Artist, Puppeteer, Activist.; Michael Ratner,
President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights; Prof. Dr. Fanny-Michaela
Reisin, Jewish Voice Germany; Diana M.A. Relke, Professor Emerita,
University of Saskatchewan; Prof. Bruce Robbins, Columbia University; Stewart
M. Robinson, retired Prof of Mathematics; Professor Lisa Rofel, University of
California, Santa Cruz; Mimi Rosenberg, Producer & Host, Building Bridges
and Wednesday Edition, WBAI 99.5 FM; Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW
Local 2325; Lillian Rosengarten, Author, From The Shadows Of Nazi
Germany To The Jewish Boat To Gaza; Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead, British
Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP); Yehoahua Rosin, Israel; Ilana
Rossoff, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; Martha Roth, Independent
Jewish Voices; Vancouver BC; Marty Roth, Emeritus professor of English,
University of Minnesota; Ruben Roth, Assistant Professor, Labour Studies,
Laurentian University; Independent Jewish Voices Canada; Emma Rubin,
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; Cheryl A. Rubenberg, Middle East
Scholar; Editor, Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict;
Author, The Palestinians in Search of a Just Peace; Josh Ruebner,
Author, Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian
Peace; Mark Rudd, retired teacher, Albuquerque NM; Ben Saifer, Independent
Jewish Voices Canada; Evalyn Segal, Rossmoor Senior Community; Sylvia
Schwarz, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network; Yossi Schwartz,
Internationalist Socialist League; Haifa; Carole Seligman, co-editor, Socialist
Viewpoint magazine; Yom Shamash, Independent Jewish Voices, Vancouver,
Canada; Tali Shapiro, Boycott from Within; Israel; Karen Shenfeld, Poet,
Toronto ON; Sid Shniad, National Steering Committee, Independent Jewish Voices
Canada; William Shookhoff, Independent Jewish Voices, Toronto ON; Melinda
Smith, Jewish Voice for Peace, Albuquerque NM; Kobi Snitz, Tel Aviv; Marsha
Steinberg, BDS-LA for Justice in Palestine, Los Angeles; Lotta Strandberg,
Visiting Scholar, NYU; Carol Stone, Independent Jewish Voices, Vancouver BC; Miriam
(Cherkes-Julkowski) Swenson, Ph.D.; Matthew Taylor, author; Laura Tillem, Peace
and Social Justice Center of South Central Kansas; Peter Trainor, Independent
Jewish Voices, Toronto; Rebecca Tumposky, International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network; Darlene Wallach, Justice for Palestinians, San Jose
CA; Dr. Abraham Weizfeld, JPLO; Bonnie Weinstein, Co-Editor of Socialist
Viewpoint magazine; Publisher, Bay Area United Against War Newsletter; Sam
Weinstein, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network-Labor; former President,
UWUA Local 132; Judith Weisman, Independent Jewish Voices; Not in Our Name
(NION); Toronto ON; Paul Werner, PhD, DSFS Editor, WOID, a journal of visual
language; Noga Wizansky, Ph.D., artist, instructor, and researcher;
Administrator, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley; Marcy Winograd,
public school teacher, former congressional peace candidate; Bekah Wolf, UC
Hastings College of Law Student; Co-founder, Palestine Solidarity Project; Sherry
Wolf, International Socialist Organization; Dave Zirin, Author, Game
Over: How Politics Have Turned the Sports World Upside Down.
Last month, as you’ve
probably heard, a closely divided Supreme Court ruled that corporations
with religious owners cannot be required to pay for insurance coverage
of contraception. The so-called Hobby Lobby decision, named for the
chain of craft stores that brought the case, has been both praised and
condemned for expanding religious rights and constraining Obamacare. But
beneath the political implications, the ruling has significant economic
undertones. It expands the right of corporations to be treated like
people, part of a trend that may be contributing to the rise of economic
inequality.
The notion that corporations are people is
ridiculous on its face, but often true. Although Mitt Romney was mocked
for saying it on the campaign trail a few summers ago, the U.S. Code,
our national rule book, defines corporations as people in its very first
sentence. And since the 19th century, the Supreme Court has ruled that
corporations are entitled to a wide range of constitutional protections.
This was a business decision, and it was a good one. Incorporation
encourages risk-taking: Investors are far more likely to put money into a
business that can outlast its creators; managers, for their part, are
more likely to take risks themselves because they owe nothing to the
investors if they fail.
The rise of corporations, which developed
more fully in the United States than in other industrializing nations,
helped to make it the richest nation on earth. And economic historians
have found that states where businesses could incorporate more easily
tended to grow more quickly, aiding New York’s rise as a banking center
and helping Pennsylvania’s coal industry to outstrip Virginia’s. The
notion of corporate personhood still sounds weird, but we rely upon it
constantly in our everyday lives. The corporation that published this
column, for instance, is exercising its constitutional right to speak
freely and to make contracts, taking money from some of you and giving a
little to me.
Since the 1950s, however, the treatment of
corporations as people has expanded beyond its original economic logic.
According to Naomi Lamoreaux, a professor of economics and history at
Yale University, the success of incorporation led states to broaden
eligibility to advocacy groups, like the N.A.A.C.P. and the Congress of
Racial Equality, which then became “the first corporations to convince
the Court that they deserved a broader set of rights.” Ever since, the
court has intermittently extended the logic of those rulings, and in
2010 it ruled that an advocacy group called Citizens United had the
right to spend money on political advertising — and that every other
corporation did, too. Last month, it added religious rights to the mix.
The
basic justification is that corporations, owned by people, should have
the same freedoms as people. And in many ways, of course, they already
do. Chick-fil-A does not sell sandwiches on Sundays. Interstate
Batteries tells prospective employees, “While it is not necessary to be a
Christian to be employed, it is a part of the daily work life for
Interstate team members.” In 1999, Omni Hotels said its new owner, a
Christian, had made a “moral decision” to stop selling pay-per-view
pornography.
But corporations, as F. Scott Fitzgerald might have
put it, are not like you and me. Those special legal powers, which allow
them to play a valuable role in the economy, can also give them the
financial power to tilt the rules of the game by lobbying for particular
legislation, among other things. “Those properties, so beneficial in
the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere,”
Justice William Rehnquist wrote in a dissenting opinion from a 1978
ruling that is a precursor to Citizens United. “Indeed, the States might
reasonably fear that the corporation would use its economic power to
obtain further benefits beyond those already bestowed.”The danger is not
only that corporations can act at the expense of society, but also that
the people who control them can act at the expense of their own
shareholders, employees and customers. While the Hobby Lobby decision
ostensibly addresses only a narrow set of circumstances — a corporation
with relatively few owners, a religious objection to particular kinds of
birth control — these sorts of limited rulings have a history of
becoming more broadly cited as precedent over time. Also, the logic of
this particular decision was so expansive and open-ended. “A corporation
is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve
desired ends,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “When rights, whether
constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose
is to protect the rights of these people.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
argued in her dissenting opinion that a corporation might object on
religious grounds to paying for blood transfusions, vaccinations or
antidepressants. Other scholars say the same logic could justify a right
to privacy as a shield against regulatory scrutiny, or a right to bear
arms.
Minority shareholders have little power to influence the
choices that corporations make. Benjamin I. Sachs, a law professor at
Harvard University, notes that while federal law lets union members
prevent the use of their dues for political purposes, shareholders do
not have similar rights. “If we’re going to say that collectives have
speech rights, then we should treat unions and corporations the same,”
Sachs told me. Employees are even more vulnerable. When companies like
YUM! Brands, which owns KFC and Taco Bell, campaign against minimum-wage
increases, they are effectively using the profits generated by their
employees to limit the compensation of those same employees. And of
course, some of Hobby Lobby’s 13,000 workers will now need to pay for
contraception.
Shareholders can sell their shares, sure, and
employees can find new jobs. But every increase in corporate rights is a
potential limitation on the menu of available jobs and investments.
“The idea that if you don’t like what the corporation is doing you
should sell your stock, or find a different job, has a certain amount of
appeal,” said Darrell A.H. Miller, a professor of law at Duke
University. “But it also assumes that people are able to just fish and
cut bait. Capital is easier to move around than your body and your
family.”
If the court follows the logic of its Hobby Lobby
decision in the decades to come, it’s not so hard to imagine a job
market where people must interview employers about their religious and
political views. Or where people who need to make a living may just feel
compelled to accept a work environment increasingly shaped by their
employers’ beliefs.
Binyamin Appelbaum is an economics reporter for The Times.
Whenever
the Israeli army drafts the reserves—which are made up of
ex-soldiers—there are dissenters, resisters, and AWOLers among the
troops called to war. Now that Israel has sent troops to Gaza again and
reserves are being summoned to service, dozens are refusing to take part.
We
are more than 50 Israelis who were once soldiers and now declare our
refusal to be part of the reserves. We oppose the Israeli Army and the
conscription law. Partly, that’s because we revile the current military
operation. But most of the signers below are women and would not have
fought in combat. For us, the army is flawed for reasons far broader
than “Operation Protective Edge,” or even the occupation. We rue the
militarization of Israel and the army’s discriminatory policies.
One example is the way women are often relegated to low-ranking secretarial positions. Another is the screening system that discriminates
against Mizrachi (Jews whose families originate in Arab countries) by
keeping them from being fairly represented inside the army’s most
prestigious units. In Israeli society, one’s unit and position determine
much of one’s professional path in the civilian afterlife.
To
us, the current military operation and the way militarization affects
Israeli society are inseparable. In Israel, war is not merely politics
by other means—it replaces politics. Israel is no longer able to think
about a solution to a political conflict except in terms of physical
might; no wonder it is prone to never-ending cycles of mortal violence.
And when the cannons fire, no criticism may be heard.
This
petition, long in the making, has a special urgency because of the
brutal military operation now taking place in our name. And although
combat soldiers are generally the ones prosecuting today’s war, their
work would not be possible without the many administrative roles in
which most of us served. So if there is a reason to oppose combat
operations in Gaza, there is also a reason to oppose the Israeli
military apparatus as a whole. That is the message of this petition:
* * *
We
were soldiers in a wide variety of units and positions in the Israeli
military—a fact we now regret, because, in our service, we found that
troops who operate in the occupied territories aren’t the only ones
enforcing the mechanisms of control over Palestinian lives. In truth,
the entire military is implicated. For that reason, we now refuse to
participate in our reserve duties, and we support all those who resist
being called to service.
The Israeli Army, a
fundamental part of Israelis’ lives, is also the power that rules over
the Palestinians living in the territories occupied in 1967. As long as
it exists in its current structure, its language and mindset control us:
We divide the world into good and evil according to the military’s
categories; the military serves as the leading authority on who is
valued more and who less in society—who is more responsible for the
occupation, who is allowed to vocalize their resistance to it and who
isn’t, and how they are allowed to do it. The military plays a central
role in every action plan and proposal discussed in the national
conversation, which explains the absence of any real argument about
non-military solutions to the conflicts Israel has been locked in with
its neighbors.
The Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are deprived of civil rights and human rights. They live under a different legal system from their Jewish neighbors.
This is not exclusively the fault of soldiers who operate in these
territories. Those troops are, therefore, not the only ones obligated to
refuse. Many of us served in logistical and bureaucratic support roles;
there, we found that the entire military helps implement the oppression
of the Palestinians.
Many soldiers who serve in
non-combat roles decline to resist because they believe their actions,
often routine and banal, are remote from the violent results elsewhere.
And actions that aren’t banal—for example, decisions about the life or
death of Palestinians made in offices many kilometers away from the West
Bank—are classified, and so it’s difficult to have a public debate
about them. Unfortunately, we did not always refuse to perform the tasks
we were charged with, and in that way we, too, contributed to the
violent actions of the military.
During our time in the army, we witnessed (or participated in) the military’s discriminatory behavior: the structural discrimination against women, which begins with the initial screening and assignment of roles; the sexual harassment that was a daily reality for
some of us; the immigration absorption centers that depend on uniformed
military assistance. Some of us also saw firsthand how the bureaucracy
deliberately funnels technical students into technical positions,
without giving them the opportunity to serve in other roles. We were
placed into training courses among people who looked and sounded like us, rather than the mixing and socializing that the army claims to do.
The
military tries to present itself as an institution that enables social
mobility—a stepping-stone into Israeli society. In reality, it
perpetuates segregation. We believe it is not accidental that those who
come from middle- and high- income families land in elite intelligence units, and from there often go to work for high-paying technology companies.
We think it is not accidental that when soldiers from a firearm
maintenance or quartermaster unit desert or leave the military, often
driven by the need to financially support their families, they are
called “draft-dodgers.”
The military enshrines an image of the “good Israeli,” who in reality
derives his power by subjugating others. The central place of the
military in Israeli society, and this ideal image it creates, work
together to erase the cultures and struggles of the Mizrachi,
Ethiopians, Palestinians, Russians, Druze, the Ultra-Orthodox, Bedouins,
and women.
We all participated, on one level or
another, in this ideology and took part in the game of the "good
Israeli” that serves the military loyally. Mostly our service did
advance our positions in universities and the labor market. We made
connections and benefited from the warm embrace of the Israeli
consensus. But for the above reasons, these benefits were not worth the
costs.
By law, some of us are still registered as part
of the reserved forces (others have managed to win exemptions or have
been granted them upon their release), and the military keeps our names
and personal information, as well as the legal option to order us to
“service.” But we will not participate—in any way.
There
are many reasons people refuse to serve in the Israeli Army. Even we
have differences in background and motivation about why we’ve written
this letter. Nevertheless, against attacks on those who resist
conscription, we support the resisters: the high school students who wrote a refusal declaration letter, the Ultra orthodox protesting the new conscription law, the Druze refusers, and all those whose conscience, personal situation, or economic well-being do not allow them to serve. Under the guise of a conversation about equality, these people are forced to pay the price. No more.
Yael
Even Or; Efrat Even Tzur; Tal Aberman; Klil Agassi; Ofri Ilany; Eran Efrati; Dalit
Baum; Roi Basha; Liat Bolzman; Lior Ben-Eliahu; Peleg Bar-Sapir; Moran Barir; Yotam
Gidron; Maya Guttman; Gal Gvili; Namer Golan; Nirith Ben Horin; Uri Gordon; Yonatan
N. Gez; Bosmat Gal; Or Glicklich; Erez Garnai; Diana Dolev; Sharon Dolev; Ariel
Handel; Shira Hertzanu; Erez Wohl; Imri Havivi; Gal Chen; Shir Cohen; Gal Katz;
Menachem Livne; Amir Livne Bar-on; Gilad Liberman; Dafna Lichtman; Yael Meiry; Amit
Meyer; Maya Michaeli; Orian Michaeli; Shira Makin; Chen Misgav; Naama Nagar; Inbal
Sinai; Kela Sappir; Shachaf Polakow; Avner Fitterman; Tom Pessah; Nadav
Frankovitz; Tamar Kedem; Amnon Keren; Eyal Rozenberg; Guy Ron-Gilboa; Noa
Shauer; Avi Shavit; Jen Shuka; Chen Tamir.
The petition for Israeli soldiers and reservists is located at Lo-Meshartot.org.
3) In Gaza, at Least 16 Die at U.N. School Used as Civilian Shelter *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) Safer Era Tests Wisdom of ‘Broken Windows’ Focus on Minor Crime
"The Police Department reported making 394,539 arrests last year. That is
tens of thousands more arrests than in 1995, when there were three
times as many murders in the city and the department was in its early
embrace of the “broken windows” strategy, which sees enforcement of
low-level offenses as effective at preventing more serious crime."
Even
as violent crime has receded across New York City, arrests are near
historic highs, driven by an increasingly controversial imperative that
no offense is too minor for police officers to pursue.
Now, the
death of a Staten Island man after officers tried to arrest him for
peddling cigarettes is intensifying scrutiny of the Police Department’s
unflagging push to arrest people over the most minor offenses.
The
Police Department reported making 394,539 arrests last year. That is
tens of thousands more arrests than in 1995, when there were three times
as many murders in the city and the department was in its early embrace
of the “broken windows” strategy, which sees enforcement of low-level
offenses as effective at preventing more serious crime.William J.
Bratton, the man who brought “broken windows” policing to New York in
the 1990s, is once again the city’s police commissioner, appointed by
Mayor Bill de Blasio, and is carrying on the department’s focus on
so-called quality of life crimes that he considers the seeds of more
serious disorder.
Eric Garner, 43, was a target of those efforts.
Suspected
of selling untaxed cigarettes on the sidewalk on Staten Island, Mr.
Garner was approached by the police last week, in a confrontation that
was captured on video recorded by bystanders.
When officers
moved in to arrest Mr. Garner, one of them wrapped an arm around his
neck in what Mr. Bratton said appeared to be a chokehold — a tactic
banned by the Police Department. After complaining that he could not
breathe, Mr. Garner appeared to slip into unconsciousness and was
pronounced dead a short time later at a hospital.
While the
apparent chokehold fueled much of the initial public outcry, community
leaders have begun asking whether focusing police officers so intently
on such petty offenses makes sense in a city that is far different and
far safer than the one Mr. Bratton left in the mid-1990s.
“I
think we need to look at whether we still need these arrests,” said Eric
L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former captain in the
Police Department.
“This is a good moment,” he said, “to re-evaluate what comes after ‘broken windows,’ now that the windows are no longer broken.”
And
with the number of stop-and-frisk encounters down sharply, the
community groups that mobilized against those street stops are turning
their attention to the number of low-level arrests, saying they will
push for changes.
“It’s the new stop-and-frisk,” Robert Gangi,
director of the Police Reform Organizing Project, said of the low-level
arrests, which, he added, were eclipsed in recent years by the public
debate over the stop-and-frisk tactic.
The long-term increase in
overall arrests reflects the convergence of two striking trends. Felony
arrests have dropped off significantly, as violent crime has plummeted.
But the soaring number of arrests for misdemeanors and noncriminal
violations has more than made up for the drop.
In 1995, for each
felony arrest, the police were making 1.3 arrests for offenses in the
broadest category of misdemeanors; by 2013, the ratio had grown to 2.5
misdemeanor arrests for each felony, according to data from the state’s
Department of Criminal Justice Services.
Mr. de Blasio, whose
campaign last year focused heavily against stopping and frisking, finds
himself championing key aspects of the police strategies of his
immediate predecessors — Mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R.
Bloomberg.
During their administrations, the city saw enormous
strides in public safety, but the Police Department was faulted for
heavy-handed tactics.
In July, the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, announced he would stop prosecuting
some marijuana arrests, which have soared in number in the last decade,
at times making up more than 10 percent of overall arrests by the
police.
But the de Blasio administration pushed back, saying the
police would not change their arrest practices when it came to
marijuana.
After Mr. Garner’s death, Mr. de Blasio said that if
citizens were complaining about the sale of cigarettes, the police were
right to enforce the law. “If police officers are asked to enforce the
law because there’s a community concern, we require that — we expect
that of them,” he said.
Indeed, Mr. Bratton said that Mr.
Garner’s death would result in “no change in that focus” of having
officers confront low-level rule-breaking. “It’s a key part of what
we’re doing,” he said, adding that disorderly behavior proliferated
quickly unless confronted by the police.
But Mr. Bratton also
seemed to signal to his officers that he was open to their handling
rule-breaking in less forceful ways. He stressed that he wanted officers
to understand he did not expect arrests where an “an admonition — ‘move
along, you can’t do that’ ” — would have sufficed. He said officers
needed to “understand they are given great powers of discretion and I’m
not measuring success by numbers of arrests.”While the Police
Department’s own statistics recorded slightly fewer than 400,000 arrests
last year, the data on arrests is imperfect. Numbers reported to the
City Council as well as to the state do not include several categories
of arrests. Additionally, the Police Department includes arrests made by
other smaller police agencies and occasionally assigns multiple arrest
numbers to people apprehended for a spree of crimes, such as a string of
burglaries.
Still, data from the city’s criminal courts charts
the increase in arrests over the last two decades and confirms the
trajectory of the Police Department’s statistics.
In 2013, the
city’s courts arraigned some 365,752 people who had been arrested, which
undercounts the total number of arrests because it does not include,
for example, cases that are immediately dismissed by prosecutors.
Randy
Mastro, a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration and now a lawyer
in private practice, said in an interview that “in one sense it’s a
surprising statistic that the arrest rates have grown” to their current
levels. But he said that it would be a mistake to roll back police
enforcement: “The policy of stricter enforcement in making arrests
across the board for what some might consider minor offenses has served
this city well, and is one of the many reasons we now have such a low
murder rate.”
Over the years, the number of people pulled into
the criminal justice system has soared in New York City. In 1994, when
the Police Department adopted the ‘broken windows’ strategy, the police
arrested 124,475 individuals for the broadest category of misdemeanors,
some more than once.
In 2013, officers arrested 162,808 people for misdemeanors, some more than once.
All
told, since 1994, the police in New York City have arrested more than
1.3 million people who had never been arrested for a penal-law crime,
according to data from the state’s Criminal Justice Services, although
some double-counting is possible because of the way arrestees are
tracked.
Marijuana arrests have driven the increase over the last
decade, with trespassing arrests also a leading factor. Some of those
who ended up in handcuffs for trespassing said they were visiting
friends or relatives, and a federal judge found the police were
unconstitutionally stopping people.
Some officers have said they
were under pressure from commanders to raise their arrest numbers,
which supervisors use to gauge productivity.
But as the city grew
safer, the police also pursued ever lower violations, such as having a
foot on a subway seat. Years after cracking down on turnstile jumpers,
the police started a push to arrest people who stood outside the
turnstile, asking others for a swipe of their MetroCard.
“There
is no logic to the explosion of arrest activity,” said Representative
Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat whose district includes Brownsville
and East New York, where the police have focused enforcement.
This
week, a mother in North Augusta, S. C., was fired from her job at
McDonald’s following an arrest earlier in the month when authorities
learned that she dropped her 9-year-old daughter off at a nearby park while she worked her shift. The news has prompted publicdebateabout the the difficulty of finding and affording child care.
One sympathetic woman, a stranger to the mother, even began a crowdfunding campaign on YouCaring.com called “Support Debra Harrell.” To date, it has exceeded its $10,000 goal by over $5,000.
The
kindness of strangers is always welcome. But what working mothers
really need are systematic ways to find and afford safe, local care
options for their kids. While many parents scramble to find care in the
summer months, especially for older children out of school, it’s a
year-round challenge for families with kids younger than preschool age.
Twelve million infants (from birth to 4 years old) are in daily care
with someone other than a primary parent, according to the Census Bureau.
Resources
for choosing a child-care provider are antiquated. Only 27 states even
post reports online on both regular monitoring and inspections of
child-care centers, and only 24 do for home-based child-care. In
California, according to a recent report
by The Center for Investigative Reporting, parents had to actually go
in person or call during business hours to request reports on one of the
48,000 state-licensed day care, preschool and after-school programs.
Even in the heart of Silicon Valley, reports aren’t available online.
Costs are high. Child Care Aware America,
a national organization focused on quality childcare, reports that the
annual cost of day care for an infant is more than the average cost of
in-state tuition and fees at public colleges in 31 states. And according to the news site Vox, the problem is just getting worse; the cost of child care is growing at nearly twice the rate of prices economy-wide.
Quality
of care is critical. We are learning more every day about how important
the first three years are to brain development. Synapses essentially
organize the brain by forming pathways that connect the parts of the
brain governing everything we do. According to Zero to Three,
a national advocacy group for families with infants, a healthy toddler
may create two million synapses per second. The adults they interact
with and the environments they’re in on a regular basis hugely impact
the quantity and quality of these connections — influencing the rest of
their lives.
Given that the stakes are so high and the costs so
steep, how does an already overwhelmed working parent find a decent,
affordable child-care provider?
The Most Basic Safety
Parents
in some places are provided with more satisfying answers than in
others. South Carolina, where Harrell is fighting to keep her daughter,
is ranked 45th in the country for quality child care by Child Care Aware America.
But
other states are demonstrating that some simple steps can go a long way
in helping parents connect with the resources they need. Take Indiana
(rated 12th). Parents in the Hoosier state can start by checking out the
official inspection records of any day care center online at the Family
and Social Services Administration website.
This helps moms and dads figure out fundamentals about the safety of a
prospective childcare provider, in addition to more subtle information,
like when and how food is served, how many providers are on site or
whether pets are allowed on the premises.
But getting the
complete reports online is only half the battle. Many parents don’t have
time to read them, and those who do can find them difficult to
understand. Many are written in county code, not plain language.
Some
child-care centers are reviewed on existing portals like Yelp, but
there are drawbacks to trying to get good information there. Yelp
doesn’t include inspection reports along with its customer reviews, and
as Melanie Brizzi of the Family and Social Services Administration
Bureau of Child Care in Indiana explains, there’s an economic incentive
for centers to drum up good reviews. “Families have always relied on
word of mouth. Yelp is the newest form of that, but parents have to
remember that it is a commercial site,” not one designed to best serve
families.
In Indiana, parents don’t just have access to the
official inspections. They can also educate themselves by going to Paths
to Quality, a website where regulated child-care providers can
volunteer to be rated on a simple scale of 1 to 4. No bureaucratic
language to wade through here. They’ve even produced a video explainer
that helps parents understand the various issues they might consider
when choosing day care.
So why is it that Indiana has managed to
create such accessible resources for busy parents and other states,
like South Carolina and California, are stuck in the dark ages?
Part
of the answer is that Indiana was ahead of the legislative curve. A
statute passed in 2000 required the local bureau to post inspection
information online (California just passed a similar statute). By 2001,
Indiana was complying.
Moving Beyond Compliance
But as
the decade wore on, its ambition grew beyond mere compliance. By 2006,
the state began training inspectors to record their findings in the
field on small tablet computers. Not only did this save time for the
inspectors, but there were fewer errors created by transferring data
from paper to computer. Monitoring became easier with the custom-built
system; noncompliance could be tracked automatically. Indiana worked
with a tech company called the Consultants Consortium to build the
web-based portal and train the inspectors. The transition was complete
by 2007.
Once that system was running smoothly, it freed the
bureau up to think about ways to make information on child care even
more accessible for busy Indiana parents. The Paths to Quality website
was operating by 2009. Since then, there has been a steady increase in
parents using the site; last year 10,677 searched for child care using
Indiana’s official search engine.
Every state has a number of
physical centers that parents can go to for references to quality
child-care providers and other information on subsidies. They’re known
as Child Care Resource and Referral centers, or C.C.R.&R.’s.
But these centers vary greatly in their quality. And parents just don’t use many of them.
Indiana,
recognizing that many people don’t have the time or desire to go to a
physical center, created a centralized call service in 2012. Indiana’s
friendly operators gather relevant information (the family’s home
address, number of kids and their ages, how much parents can pay and
what days they need help, their preferences regarding in home vs.
stand-alone center vs. ministerial care, etc.) and then compile a
customized list of good options for the caller which they can email or
go over in real time on the phone. They can even read inspections with
callers to be sure they understand the nature of violations.
These
same operators also field any complaints, which further holds providers
accountable between inspections, and helps worried parents find
alternative care options as quickly as possible.
The call
center, which fielded nearly 9,000 calls last year, is open during
regular business hours, but has extended hours once a week and is also
open Saturdays. Parents can leave a message and are guaranteed to get a
call back within 24 hours. They can also email.
The Economic Case for Quality Care
To
be sure, Indiana’s population (7 million) is small compared with those
of many other states (including California, which has 38 million
residents), but the majority of fixes — inspectors armed with tablets in
the field, the easier-to-understand ranking system, the centralized
call center — wouldn’t be difficult to scale.
The class
implications are startling. Working-class parents are less likely to
have maternity and/or paternity leave — special time to start nurturing
those first synapses and smiles themselves; they also don’t have as much
flexibility during the workday to visit referral centers, tour day care
centers or request inspection reports in person.
States like
Indiana that have committed to helping parents find and afford quality
care are making an investment in the future of their state, and the
nation.
Ted Maple, the president and chief executive of the Day
Nursery Association of Indianapolis, believes that making it easier for
parents to find quality care isn’t just right, but smart for states
(especially those struggling to lower unemployment). In fact, the
economic argument was pivotal in helping Indiana pass recent legislation
that will help more kids — especially poor kids — thrive in safe,
stimulating day care settings. Maple explains, “We had great bipartisan
support for the bill, in large part, because business got behind it. Big
employers argued that it’s hard for them to retain great workers when
they can’t find or afford quality child care. There is a growing
recognition in the business community that early childhood education has
a long-term payoff.”
The Indiana law, which goes into effect in
May, also provides incentives to day care centers to improve their
facilities and hire more workers through increased reimbursement rates
for good inspections. That’s good for cash-strapped caregivers, too.
While
few studies exist on the link between improving parents’ capacity to
find quality child care and a thriving economy, related research on the
bottom line benefits of early-childhood programs are plentiful. In 2007,
for example, Ludwig of the University of Chicago and Deborah Phillips
of Georgetown found
that there was a $7 to $9 return on investment for every $1 invested in
Head Start, a federal program that promotes the school readiness of
children ages birth to 5 from low-income families.
There is some controversy
surrounding studies like these, but most researchers agree that Head
Start, and programs like it, have been shown to have lasting positive
effects on children in areas such as future college attendance and fewer
criminal offenses in young adulthood, among others.
Brizzi
explains, “Too often we still see that the poorest quality room in a
child-care center is the one that has the infants and toddlers. It’s an
afterthought — the babies just need to be fed and have their diapers
changed. But there is a growing awareness, thanks to all of the great
research coming out, about how important the infant stage really is.
Now
we need to get that research out and make a focused investment that
starts with empowering parents. We have a long way to go.”
Courtney E. Martin is the author of “Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists” and “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women.” This column was written as a collaboration between the Solutions Journalism Network, which she co-founded, and Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit investigative newsroom based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
6) Clashes Spread to West Bank: 5 Protesters Die in ‘Day of Rage’
JERUSALEM — Violence spread to the West Bank on
Friday as enraged Palestinians protested Israel’s continuing military
offensive in Gaza. At least five Palestinians were killed in clashes
with Israeli security forces, according to Palestinian medical officials
and local news reports, adding to the explosive atmosphere in the
region and raising the specter of further unrest.
The protests
came on what Palestinians planned as a “day of rage” over the war in
Gaza, where 18 days of combat have cost the lives of more than 800
Palestinians, most of them civilians, as well as 33 Israeli soldiers.
Three civilians in Israel have also been killed in rocket and mortar
fire from Gaza. Following an international outcry over a deadly strike Thursday on a school in Gaza where civilians had taken refuge, Secretary of State John Kerry and other diplomats pressed their efforts on Friday to arrange a cease-fire.Palestinians
planned to mount demonstrations in Jerusalem and throughout the West
Bank on Friday, the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan,
known as Al Quds Day. A spokesman for the Israeli police said that
sporadic disturbances broke out in some East Jerusalem neighborhoods
early in the afternoon, as 10,000 Muslims attended prayers in the Al
Aksa Mosque compound. Hoping to head off trouble, Israeli authorities
barred men under 50 from entering the compound.
Weeks of
simmering tensions and outbursts of violence in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem has increased talk among Israelis and Palestinians alike about
the specter of a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising. But many said
that such uprisings, by their nature, could not be planned or
predicted.
“The intifada does not start by a decision and end by a
decision,” said Othman Abu Gharbiya, a member of the Fatah central
committee, a decision-making body of the mainstream secular party that
dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Still, he said,
“no doubt we are passing through a dangerous time.”
Trouble
erupted Thursday night during a march at the Qalandia checkpoint that
separates the West Bank town of Ramallah from Jerusalem. Thousands of
marchers chanted, “With our soul and blood, we will redeem Gaza,” and
clashes broke out between stone-throwing youths and Israeli security
forces. One Palestinian teenager was killed and scores were wounded.
The
funeral of the youth, Muhammad al-Araj, 17, drew thousands of mourners
on Friday. His father, Ziad al-Araj, 41, a plasterer from the nearby
Qalandia refugee camp, said that after seeing the bodies of women and
children killed in Gaza on television, his son had told him that he
wanted to join the fighters there. “He wrote in his phone, ‘I hope to be
a martyr,’ ” Mr. Araj said.
The imam at the Qalandia camp’s
mosque assailed Israel in his Friday sermon, shouting in fury, “Kill me,
cut me into pieces, drown me in blood, you will never live in my land,
you will never live in my sky!”
The spokesman for the Israeli
police, Micky Rosenfeld, said that 40 Palestinians were arrested during
clashes overnight in East Jerusalem, and 29 Israeli officers were
wounded.
Two of the Palestinians who were killed on Friday were
shot in Hawara, just south of Nablus, according to a medical official at
Rafadiyeh Hospital in Nablus. Palestinian news reports said that at
least one of them was shot by a female Israeli settler.
A
spokeswoman for the Israeli military said that an Israeli woman got out
of her vehicle and fired in the air as about 200 Palestinians were
rioting near Hawara, blocking the road and hurling rocks. The
spokeswoman, speaking on the condition of anonymity under army rules,
said she had no further information about the event.
The medical
official at Rafadiyeh Hospital said the two men killed at Hawara were
Khaled Azmi Odeh, 19, who he said was shot in the abdomen, and Tayeb
Saleh Odeh, 22, who he said was shot in the head.
Three more
Palestinians were killed in Beit Ommar, near Hebron in the southern West
Bank, according to local activists and Palestinian news reports. The
activists said all three were shot with live ammunition at a
demonstration. They identified the three as Sultan Shuqdam, Abd al-Hamid
Breigheth, and Hashem Abu Maria. Mr. Maria, 47, was said to have worked
with Defense of Children International-Palestine, an advocacy group.
In
the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed a member of Islamic Jihad’s
military wing and two of his sons early Friday with an airstrike near
Rafah. A statement from Islamic Jihad, which has been fighting Israel
alongside Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, said
that the airstrike killed Salah Abu Hassanein, 45, and his sons, ages 15
and 12, in the entrance to their home. Mr. Hassanein was a spokesman
for Islamic Jihad’s militia, the Al-Quds Brigades.
The Israeli
military, which has made a point of targeting Islamic Jihad and Hamas
operatives, said that besides Mr. Hassanein, it had killed eight others
in recent days. It also said that a 36-year-old reservist was killed in
combat in northern Gaza.
Palestinian militants in Gaza continued
to fire rockets into Israel on Friday. The Israeli military said two
were intercepted over Tel Aviv by the country’s Iron Dome antimissile
system, but shrapnel from another damaged an apartment building in the
coastal city of Ashkelon.
Mr. Kerry was said to be working in
Cairo to build support for a two-stage cease-fire plan that would halt
hostilities for seven days while broader terms were discussed, but allow
Israeli troops to remain in Gaza and perhaps even continue to destroy
the tunnels they have discovered leading into their territory.
Israeli
news outlets reported that Mr. Kerry would fly to Paris on Friday and
meet with his counterparts from France, Britain, Qatar and Turkey, as
well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief and the
secretary-general of the Arab League. Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of
the United Nations, was also in Cairo and scheduled to address
journalists in the early afternoon.
Israel’s senior ministers
were scheduled to meet Friday afternoon to consider Mr. Kerry’s
initiative — as well as a possible expansion of the aerial bombardment
of Gaza that began on July 8 and the ground operation that followed on
July 17.
“The conditions brought by Secretary of State Kerry are
acceptable, in the main, to Israel, and they relate to the fact that we
will not leave the area and we will continue with the tunnel operation,”
Yaakov Peri, a centrist minister and former head of Israel’s internal
security service, said on Israel Radio as he headed to the meeting. “I
certainly have my doubts that Hamas will agree. If Hamas does not agree,
there won’t be a humanitarian cease-fire.”
A statement by the
Israeli military said 65,000 reservists had been mobilized for the Gaza
operation, up from a previous estimate of 59,000. It said 843 rockets
had been launched toward Israel since the ground offensive began; 658
landed in Israel and 166 were intercepted. Israeli forces targeted 45
sites in Gaza overnight, the military statement said.
Isabel
Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Said Ghazali from Qalandia, West
Bank. Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem; Fares Akram
from Gaza; and Michael R. Gordon from Cairo.
According to the New YorkDaily News, numbers from the Civilian Complaint Review Board reveal
that more than 1,000 New York City residents claimed to be victims of
NYPD chokeholds in the past five years. The numbers were unveiled as the
Board prepares to conduct a study of the allegations.
As of July 1, the CCRB had received 58 chokehold complaints against the NYPD this year, but had only substantiated one of them.
Out
of the 1,022 chokehold allegations reported between 2009 and 2013, only
462 of the complaints were investigated. Out of that number, just nine
were substantiated, according to the CCRB.
There wasn’t enough evidence to prove a chokehold was used in 206 of the cases investigated, officials said.
TheNew York Timesreported that chokehold allegations in the city have increased from a decade ago, despite the fact that NYPD banned the use of the chokehold 20 years ago.
The
city’s police commissioner, William J. Bratton, admitted that it
appeared a chokehold had been used on Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father
of six who died last Thursday. A video
captured of the scene shows NYPD officers alleging that Garner was
illegally selling cigarettes. Garner says he’s done nothing wrong, that
he’s sick of police harassment and that such harassment “ends today.”
Officers proceed to arrest him, while one throws his arm around Garner’s
neck from behind. Garner says repeatedly that he can’t breathe before
his body goes limp.
“It ends today” became the rallying cry for
anti-police brutality protesters. Last weekend, Reverend Al Sharpton
rallied more than 300 people to call for justice for Eric Garner. And on
Wednesday, protestors held a candlelight vigil for Garner on the eve of
his funeral and then marched to the precinct stationhouse where the
involved officers were stationed.
Following Garner's death,
Bratton announced that all 35,000 officers will undergo retraining while
the department reviews its tactics. But a senior police official told
theNew York Timesthat one of those tactics they are thinking of increasing is the use of tasers—a practice that has been fatal in the past and is dangerous for people with heart problems.
Perhaps even more egregious is the attitude some cops have taken toward the case. As PolicyMic reported,
a look at police officer forums reveals some officers’ defending the
NYPD’s handling of Garner. “Harsh words from public figures are good on
paper, but they will become meaningless if the attitudes of these police
officers don't change,” the author of the piece wrote.
This culture of violence is the outcome of the “broken windows” policing
Bratton helped introduce and popularize, says Nick Malinowski, member
of New Yorkers Against Bratton, an ad hoc group of parents who have lost
children to police violence, activists, social workers, etc., formed
after NYC Mayor DeBlasio announced he would bring back Bratton as NYPD
Commissioner.
New Yorkers Against Bratton held a press conference outside city hall Monday, demanding that Bratton resign
after Garner’s death, and to “move away from this idea that the police
officers involved — this was just a bad cop sort of a thing” and
understand it as a systemic issue, Malinowski told AlterNet.
Malinowski
said the group also demands a federal investigation into NYPD’s culture
of brutality, especially as the city’s promises of investigations,
reviews and retraining often amount to empty rhetoric.
“Bratton,
when he first came in, said that they were doing a unit by unit review
of every aspect of the NYPD and they had this new guy they brought in to
do the training,” Malinowski said. “Somehow they didn’t uncover all
these issues and have to do another review of the department. So I don’t
quite understand.… You would think that use of force, which has been an
issue with the NYPD forever, would have been something they identified
as a problem in a training initiative in the first review of the
department.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put his
arm around Garner’s neck, has been stripped of his gun and badge while
the investigation is underway. A medical examiner is still investigating
Garner’s official cause of death.
Sharpton said
he intends to meet with Garner’s family to discuss filing a lawsuit
against the department. He also plans to meet with the U.S. Department
of Justice to talk about the case.
At Garner’s funeral on Wednesday, Sharpton called on New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Bratton to seek justice for Garner.
He said,
“Y'all said: 'Give me a chance' … And some of us, even under attack,
gave you a chance. You're in city hall now. Now we want you to give
justice a chance. We want to see what you're going to do about this.”
13) In Queens, Immigrants Clash With Residents of New Homeless Shelter
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/nyregion/homeless-shelters-opening-in-queens-stirs-ugly-exchanges.html?ref=nyregion
The
crowd of 500 included grandmothers and small children, Chinese
immigrants and the president of a local Republican club, all shouting
that the mayor had trampled their rights.
The source of their
anger? The 180 homeless families that New York City had moved into the
defunct Pan American Hotel in Elmhurst, Queens. The residents felt
nervous around the new arrivals, they said. There were reports of
shoplifting from the Good Fortune Supermarket, public urination and
panhandling — all things, they said, that had been unheard-of in their
neighborhood until now.
During the protest on Tuesday night, one
of the organizers spoke through a bullhorn in Mandarin, as a few people
looked out the windows of the hotel.
“Speak in English!” a woman leaning out a window shouted, holding up her phone, perhaps to videotape the protest.
“Homeless with money,” a protester sneered, referring to the woman and her phone.
While
local residents often object when the city opens a homeless shelter in
their midst, the vitriol in Elmhurst since the city began moving
families into the hotel in early June has shocked New York officials.
Because many of those opposed to using the hotel as a shelter are
Chinese immigrants, the conflict has also produced discomfiting images
of immigrant families and the mostly black and Latino homeless families
shouting insults at one another. A local civic group, Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together,
has organized a series of protests, including one in late June in which
some of the protesters yelled at the shelter residents to “Get a job!”
The homeless families responded that their opponents should “go back to
China.”
Both the protest organizers and city officials now seem
to want to avoid a repeat of that scene. On Tuesday the city sent buses
to take the shelter residents and their children to a movie, to keep
them away from the protest. And the organizers tried to keep the
speakers’ criticism focused on the city’s policy, rather than on the
homeless themselves. There were occasional lapses, as when a man
translating a speech into Mandarin inserted a sentence saying that the
city should not “put this garbage in our community.”
Mayor Bill
de Blasio has made it a top priority to tackle the housing crisis by
building or preserving some 200,000 units of affordable housing. He has
promised to stem the city’s record numbers of homeless people in
shelters by starting rent subsidy programs to help working and
chronically homeless families.
But with those programs not yet in
place, his administration is struggling to house the tens of thousands
of people, including some 11,000 families, currently seeking shelter.
With the city dependent on private landlords to supply space for
shelters and nonprofit service providers to run them, it does not have
many options for where to locate shelters.
The Pan American
Hotel, on Queens Boulevard, is one of 11 shelters opened since the
beginning of the year. A blocky, seven-story structure with 216 rooms,
it was purchased recently by investors who are involved in running other
shelters. The city’s Department of Homeless Services initially said the
hotel was not appropriate for families because its units lacked
kitchens. But in early June, facing more families seeking housing than
it had units available, officials made an emergency agreement with a
nonprofit shelter operator, Samaritan Village,
and began moving families in. Because the hotel lacks any kitchens, for
now, meals are delivered. As of Tuesday, there were 648 people staying
there, including 350 children.
Typically, the city consults
extensively with local officials before opening a shelter, a process
that can take up to a year. In this case, the Department of Homeless
Services notified the local City Council member on the evening before
the first families were moved into the hotel, and other elected
officials only later. State Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, one of
several officials who have criticized the city’s handling of the
shelter, called the failure to notify him in advance “absolutely
unacceptable and a complete dereliction of duty.”
Several
Republican activists from elsewhere in Queens have also denounced the
shelter as an example of government run amok, with one comparing the
city’s shelter system to “a gulag.”
Several Chinese people at the protest on Tuesday said they believed that the city had intentionally targeted their neighborhood.
“Government
always picks on an easy area,” said Edward Fung, 62, saying that
historically the residents of Elmhurst had not been politically
organized.
Rachel Lam, 33, said she believed the government was bullying Asians because they assumed Asians would be silent.
“But when it comes to our home, our children, our community, our safety, we will come out and protest,” Ms. Lam said.
At
the protest, many of the speakers stressed practical issues, like the
neighborhood’s overcrowded schools, and pointed out that there were
other shelters and adult homes nearby.
But in interviews, many said the homeless families simply made them feel unsafe.
“When
you see them, it looks like they’re going to mug you,” Linda Chang, 50,
said in Mandarin. “It makes me feel uncomfortable.”
On an evening earlier this month, many residents who live behind the hotel expressed similar fears.
Mark
Gao, 32, a wok chef at a Sichuan restaurant in Manhattan, said that his
wife was nervous to walk home alone at night from her restaurant job,
and that he had told his nieces not to play outside without an adult.
“Why
does the government want to support this group?” Mr. Gao said in
Mandarin. “Why do they want to give them free money? We have to work
from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.”
He said he had taken his sons and nieces
to a protest last month and that they had been scared and confused when
the homeless families yelled at them.
“They asked me, ‘Why are these people so bad? Why do they want to fight with us?’ ” he said.
Kendall Walker said his 8-year-old son had been asking him the same questions.
Mr.
Walker, 28, is staying in the hotel with his wife, Shakeema Morris, and
their three children. The family had been living with Mr. Walker’s
brother in public housing in Brooklyn when the brother was evicted for
not paying rent. Since arriving at the shelter, Mr. Walker has gotten
two jobs — one full time, in building maintenance, and another part
time, working in a warehouse.
He said his son, Kendall Jr., had asked him why “the Chinese people” didn’t want them there.
“I
told him, just because you’re a different color skin, it makes you no
different from anybody else,” said Mr. Walker, who is black. “You still
have a voice just like everyone else in the community.”
Mr. Walker said he sympathized with local residents’ frustration that they were not told about the shelter before it opened.
The
Department of Homeless Services has said that it plans to use the hotel
as a shelter as long it is needed. On Thursday, in a memo to elected
officials and community leaders across the city, the department’s
commissioner, Gilbert Taylor, said that in the future the department
would make “every effort” to notify communities seven days before
opening a shelter.
“I understand it’s much better when you have a
process, but emergencies are that — emergencies,” Lilliam
Barrios-Paoli, the deputy mayor for health and human services, said in
an interview.
She said that she had never seen anything as extreme as the reaction in Elmhurst.
“You
have good people that somehow or another are looking at other good
people and are vilifying them because they feel threatened by some
unknown thing that is mostly in their head,” Ms. Barrios-Paoli said.
“It’s really sad.”
The protests have drawn criticism from some
local residents. Zicheng Pan, 37, whose family owns the Yeung Chinese
Restaurant on Grand Avenue, said that someone had come to the restaurant
asking him to post fliers advertising one of the protests, but he had
decided not to.
“Let’s give them a chance,” he said in Mandarin.
The
New Life Fellowship Church on Queens Boulevard is holding a barbecue
for the families this weekend, and its youth group is working to combat
stereotypes of homeless people.
Tala Haider, 18, who runs the youth group, said he was upset by the tone of the protests.
“This
is an immigrant community, which means we were given the opportunity to
come here and settle down, and now when a new population is coming in,
we’re like, ‘No’ — we’re against it,” said Mr. Haider, who came to
America from Pakistan when he was 4.
“I guess they didn’t really think about that yet,” he added.
15) Repeal Prohibition, Again By THE EDITORIAL BOARD July 27, 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-marijuana-legalization.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
It
took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end
Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise
law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and
flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the
current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to
prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.
We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the
members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing
movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.
There are
no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use.
But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we
believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and
law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of
national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow
recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the
state level.
We considered whether it would be best for
Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with
legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even
simply legalizing all use. Nearly three-quarters of the states have done
one of these.
But that would leave their citizens vulnerable
to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to
enforce or not enforce the federal law.
The social costs of the
marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana
possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures,
compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even
worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black
men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career
criminals.
There is honest debate among scientists about the
health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the evidence is
overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor
problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of
marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults.
Claims that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as
fanciful as the “Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide.
There are legitimate concerns about marijuana on the development of
adolescent brains. For that reason, we advocate the prohibition of sales
to people under 21.
Creating systems for regulating
manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems are
solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not
clung to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal
crime.
In coming days, we will publish articles by members of
the Editorial Board and supplementary material that will examine these
questions. We invite readers to offer their ideas, and we will report
back on their responses, pro and con.
We recognize that this
Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on
other big issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of
Prohibition. *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Pause in the Fighting Gives Civilians on Both Sides a Moment to Take Stock
"More
than 140 bodies were recovered across Gaza on Saturday — including 21
members of one family — raising the Palestinian death toll to 1,139,
most of them civilians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. On the
Israeli side, 42 soldiers and three civilians have been killed."
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning.
Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital
information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado
in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case
probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to
Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being
prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from
even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection
with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton
or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to
“make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison
cell.
I am immensely thankful to both these young whistle-blowers
who have so bravely stood up against the powerful forces of the US
government in order to reveal corruption, illegal spying and war
crimes. They were both motivated by their commitments to democracy and
justice. They both chose to reveal information directly to the public,
at great cost to themselves, so that citizens and taxpayers could be
fully informed of the facts. They also revealed the amazing potential
of new technologies to increase public access to information and
strengthen democracy. It saddens me that our current political leaders,
rather than embracing this potential, have chosen to tighten their
strangleholds on power and information, turning away from both progress
and justice.
Shockingly, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistle-blowers under the Espionage Act than every previous president combined. These
heroes do not deserve to be thrown in prison or called a traitor for
doing the right thing. Obama’s unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse
of the Espionage Act—as if it were a British-type Official Secrets Act,
never intended by Congress and a violation of our First Amendment—and
Manning’s 35-year prison sentence will have a chilling effect on future
citizens’ willingness to uncover hidden injustices. The government has
already brought comparable charges against Snowden.
The only remedy to this chilling precedent, designed to
effect government whistle-blowers as a whole, is to overturn the Manning
verdict. Given that Manning’s court martial produced the
longest trial record in US military history, it will take a top legal
team countless hours to prepare their defense. But as an Advisory Board
member for the Chelsea Manning Support Network, I was inspired by the
way citizens around the world stepped forward to help fund a strong
defense during Manning’s trial. I remain hopeful that enough people
will recognize the immense importance of these appeals and will
contribute to help us finish the struggle we started. That struggle, of
course, is for a just political system and freedom for our
whistle-blowers.
Chelsea Manning has continued to demonstrate uncommon bravery and character, even from behind bars. With the New York Times
Op-Ed she published last month, she has cemented her position as a
compelling voice for government reform. Working as an intelligence
analyst in Iraq, Manning was privy to a special view of the
inner-workings of our military’s propaganda systems. Despite her
personal struggles, she felt compelled to share her knowledge of what
was happening in Iraq with the Americans people. If the military hadn’t
hidden the number of civilian casualties and incidences of torture
detailed in the Iraq Logs she released, we would have known far sooner
to expect the civil war that has gripped Iraq fully today. Her exposure
of US knowledge of the corruption in Tunisia, by the dictator our
government supported, was a critical catalyst of the non-violent
uprising which toppled that dictator, in turn directly inspiring the
occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and then the Occupy movement in the
US
I personally am inspired by Chelsea Manning as I am by
Edward Snowden, which is why I have spent countless hours advocating for
both of them. I’m asking you to join me today in supporting what I
believe to be one of the most important legal proceedings in our
country’s history. We are fortunate to have a truly impressive legal team that has agreed to partner with us. Already, our new appeals attorney Nancy Hollander and her team have begun to research legal strategies, and are collaborating with Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the international news media to highlight the significance of this case.
Chelsea is only 26 now, younger than I was when I learned to
recognize the injustices of the Vietnam War. She wishes to complete her
education, as I did, and go into public service. Imagine what great things she could both learn and teach the world if she were free. Now
imagine if our corrupt government officials are allowed to get their
way, holding her behind bars until life has almost passed her by, and
extraditing Snowden to suffer the same outcome. What a sad result that
would be for our country and our humanity.
I have been waiting forty years for a legal process to at long last
prove the unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act as applied to
whistle-blowers (the Supreme Court has never yet addressed this issue).
This appeals process can accomplish that, and it can reduce Chelsea’s
sentence by decades. But unfortunately, without your help today it will
not happen. We must raise $100,000 by September 1st, to ensure
that Chelsea’s team have the resources to fully fight this stage of the
appeals process.
Unless Manning’s conviction is overturned in appeals, Snowden
and many other whistle-blowers, today and in the future, will face a
similar fate. And with them will perish one of the most
critical lifelines for our democracy. But you can join me in fighting
back. I’m asking you to do it for Chelsea, to do it for Snowden, and to
do it because it’s the right thing to do to preserve our democracy. We
can only win this great struggle with your help. Please contribute to help us fund Chelsea’s legal appeals today.
It’s time we band together on the right side of history once again.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 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
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.
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:
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
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.
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
"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
"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.
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return, July 22, 2014 
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a personal hero of mine, has recently filed to renew his asylum in Russia. Exiled thousands of miles from friends and family, he awaits his fate. He learned from the example of another top hero of mine, Chelsea Manning.
Manning helped inspire his revelations that if he released his vital
information while in this country he would have been held incommunicado
in isolation as Chelsea was for over ten months—in Snowden’s case
probably for the rest of his life. And facing comparable charges to
Chelsea’s, he would have no more chance than Chelsea to have a truly fair trial—being
prevented by the prosecution and judge (as I was, forty years ago) from
even raising arguments of public interest or lack of harm in connection
with his disclosures. Contrary to the hollow advice of Hillary Clinton
or John Kerry, if he were to return to America he would not be able to
“make his case” neither “in court,” nor “to the public” from a prison
cell.
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