Thursday, July 10, 2014

BAUAW NEWSLETTER: FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2014

PROTEST and MARCH
Stop Israeli Collective Punishment of Palestinians
Free Palestinian Children & All Prisoners in Israeli Jails
Stop U.S. Aid to Israel
End Israel’s Colonial Occupation Now!
 
Saturday, July 12, 12pm
Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero BART Station, San Francisco

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org
http://www.AnswerSF.org
Answer@AnswerSF.org
2969 Mission St.
415-821-6545

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

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

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A. ARTICLES IN FULL 
(Unless otherwise noted)

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1) As New York Landlords Push for Buyouts, Tenants Stand Their Ground
By

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/nyregion/as-new-york-landlords-push-for-buyouts-tenants-stand-their-ground.html?ref=nyregion




2) Brooklyn Prosecutor Limits When He’ll Target Marijuana
By and




3) Study Finds Racial Disparity in Criminal Prosecutions
"One of the starkest disparities emerged in the prosecution of misdemeanor drug crimes like possession of marijuana or cocaine. The study found blacks were 27 percent more likely than whites to receive jail or prison time for misdemeanor drug offenses, while Hispanic defendants were 18 percent more likely to be incarcerated for those crimes."
By




4) Using M.C.s and M.D.s to Promote Healthy Eating for Youths
By





5) I Filmed the LAPD Assaulting Me at Pro-Israel Demonstration
by Ali Abunimah
Published on Wednesday, July 9, 2014 by Electronic Intifada
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/07/09-0
6) A Palestinian Mother’s Fear in East Jerusalem
By RULA SALAMEH




7) Fleeing Gangs, Children Head to U.S. Border
By




8) Death Toll Rises in Gaza, as Hamas Hits New Targets in Israel
By ISABEL KERSHNER and FARES AKRAM




9)  Campaign Atmosphere Amid Detroit Vote on Debt Plan
By and STEVEN YACCINO




10) N.S.A. Spied on 5 American Muslims, a Report Says
By and MATT APUZZO




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




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




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




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






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






















 


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1) As New York Landlords Push for Buyouts, Tenants Stand Their Ground
By
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/nyregion/as-new-york-landlords-push-for-buyouts-tenants-stand-their-ground.html?ref=nyregion

 The first offer from the landlord’s representative came in April: Take $90,000 to move out, the tenants said they were told, or the landlord would sue and they would lose their apartment anyway.

Lin Thai Ng, who lives in a cramped $500-a-month studio in NoLIta with her husband, said no. The landlord persisted and offered $100,000.

But after they refused again, the couple received a notice saying they were not the lawful tenants and declaring them squatters. They were told they had 18 days to get out or they would be evicted.

“He wants us to move,” Ms. Ng, 57, an immigrant from Malaysia, said in Cantonese through an interpreter, “but where are we going to move?”Buyouts have long been part of the city’s real estate lore, complete with only-in-New York stories of tenants who made millions relinquishing apartments they did not own. But as offers have become more common at the lower end of the ravenous housing market, buyouts have become instruments of illegal harassment and a growing threat to the stock of affordable housing, tenant groups and housing officials said.

In fast-changing neighborhoods, like Chinatown and East Harlem in Manhattan and the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, offers are often anything but amicable and rarely are generous enough to help tenants settle elsewhere in the city, they said.

Richard R. White, who leads the state’s Tenant Protection Unit, said some landlords failed to make repairs, declined to cash rent checks or threatened illegal evictions “to force tenants to accept what are often unconscionably meager buyouts.”

Helen Rosenthal, a councilwoman from the Upper West Side of Manhattan who is sponsoring a bill to allow tenants to collect compensatory and punitive damages from landlords for harassment, said landlords’ motive for pushing out tenants was obvious. “They can make a killing in the market,” she said.

The intense demand for housing has made rent-regulated apartments even more precious. It has also drawn the attention of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who pledged during his campaign last year to address economic inequality. The mayor joined tenant groups in calling for a first-ever rent freeze by the Rent Guidelines Board, which voted last month to allow the lowest percentage rent increase in its 45-year history for nearly one million apartments.

The stock of rent-stabilized apartments has been shrinking, though, mostly through rent increases after a unit becomes vacant. If a vacant unit can rent for $2,500 or more a month, it can be freed from rent regulation.

Landlords and their lawyers said that buying out longtime tenants in low-rent apartments was the lawful way to make room for those who would pay more.

The Rent Stabilization Association, the trade organization for the city’s landlords, said that harassment was not common and that complaints about buyouts could be a negotiating tool intended to extract a better offer.

“If someone is abusive and rude, that’s one thing,” said Mitchell Posilkin, general counsel for the association. “But if someone is being persistent, that’s another.”

Tenants groups said repeated buyout offers could be intended to intimidate or pressure residents. Some landlords also hire relocation specialists, who receive a fee for each vacancy, which law enforcement officials said was an incentive for wrongdoing.

A number of state and city laws prohibit conduct meant to force tenants to vacate an apartment or waive tenancy rights. A 2008 city law bans interrupting essential services, initiating baseless eviction proceedings or locking out a tenant.

Since that law went into effect, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development said the number of complaints had been rising — to 748 last year, from 541 in 2012. While most cases are ultimately withdrawn or dismissed, of the 3,200 filed since 2008, about 600 led to settlements and 44 ended in a finding of harassment.

Tenant groups said the law had been ineffective because the cases were hard to prove and because, if they lose, tenants might have to pay the landlord’s lawyer fees.

In a case settled in December, the state accused Castellan NYC Partners and Liberty Place Property Management of offering sums as low as $2,000 to get mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants to waive their tenancy rights in buildings in Brooklyn, Harlem, the South Bronx and the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. In one federal court case, a group of black tenants in a Flatbush development, Homewood Gardens Estates, said they were offered $4,000 to $15,000 to leave their apartments as part of a harassment campaign that included landlords’ refusals to do repairs.

“Our clients rarely have the resources to find other affordable apartments,” said Edward Josephson, director of litigation for Legal Services NYC, which filed the federal lawsuit in April.

Jacob Laufer, the lawyer for Homewood Gardens Estates, said his client “categorically denies harassing tenants.” But Mr. Laufer, citing the pending litigation, declined to answer questions.

For tenants who decide to stay, even an offer of $100,000 loses appeal when measured against the realities of the real estate market.

Ms. Ng and her husband, a 61-year-old bus driver for the city who spoke on the condition that his name not be used because he feared it would jeopardize his job, said they subtracted taxes, moving costs and other expenses from the offer amount. Then they calculated how long the money would last if they rented another apartment for about $2,000 a month.

“In two and a half years all the money would be gone,” he said.

For most low-income residents, tenant groups said, a buyout seldom paid off.

“Keeping your affordable apartment, in a market where affordable housing is becoming harder and harder to come by, is worth more than any lump sum a landlord might throw at you,” said Brandon Kielbasa, lead organizer of Cooper Square Committee, a community group in the East Village.

For Ms. Ng and her husband, though, staying now means facing eviction. Their landlord, Samy Mahfar of SMA Equities in Great Neck, N.Y., who bought the 16-apartment building on Spring Street in 2012, said in an interview that he offered buyouts to tenants because “sometimes it’s just easier” than taking them to court. But he said Ms. Ng and her husband were not the apartment’s leaseholders and were occupying the studio illegally.

Mr. Mahfar, who has bought more than a dozen residential properties in Lower Manhattan in recent years, said that he was aware of tenants’ complaints about the relocation specialist and that “we’re trying to be more sensitive.” He said buyout offers at his buildings ranged from $5,000 to $100,000 depending on the case. Many of his tenants were illegally subleasing or were in arrears on their rent, he said.

For lawful occupants who want to stay, Mr. Mahfar said he did not press them to leave. “We can’t force people to take the money,” he said.

In the case of Ms. Ng, her apartment could rent for $2,500 to $3,000, Mr. Mahfar said — up to six times the current rent.

Sadia Rahman, a supervising lawyer at the Urban Justice Center, an organization that was advising the tenants in the building, said that the previous landlord had registered Ms. Ng in state documents as an occupant of her apartment since 2010 and that under such circumstances Ms. Ng and her husband would have an opportunity to establish their right to stay. Last year, the center sued and reached a settlement with Mr. Mahfar over the treatment of tenants at another of his buildings on the Lower East Side.

Ms. Rahman, who is working with CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, an immigrant advocacy group, to assist the tenants, said the court proceedings are a form of harassment. “If the landlord had a strong case to begin with, he wouldn’t have put $100,000 on the table,” she said.

In another building owned by Mr. Mahfar on the Lower East Side, Steven M. Yee is holding out and also helping to organize the Chinese immigrant families in the building to do the same.

“Buyouts destroy communities,” Mr. Yee said.

He said that tenants there received offers of $40,000 to $70,000 since the building changed hands earlier this year, and that some tenants had accepted. Mr. Yee, 45, a restaurant/bar consultant, conceded that he would consider a buyout himself for $250,000 or more.

If money wins, he said, “they’ve got to give you enough to buy a home because, in essence, you’re losing your home.”

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2) Brooklyn Prosecutor Limits When He’ll Target Marijuana
By and

After months of resistance from the New York Police Department, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced on Tuesday that it would immediately carry out its plan to stop prosecuting most low-level marijuana cases.

The policy was proposed in a draft confidential memorandum in April, but was delayed as prosecutors and police officials tried to iron out their differences in meetings and phone calls.

The policy described in a memo dated Tuesday still offers plenty of exceptions: Only those with no criminal records, or minimal ones, qualify, and the cases of people caught smoking in public spaces — and especially around children — will not automatically be thrown out.

The district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, said in the memo that the policy was set up to keep nonviolent people, “and especially young people of color,” out of the criminal justice system; an open case, Mr. Thompson wrote, can lead to problems with jobs, housing and school for defendants.

The policy became an early criminal justice policy test for Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat who had criticized police arrest practices over marijuana in terms similar to Mr. Thompson’s. But in negotiating the policy, the mayor seemed to defer to his police commissioner, William J. Bratton, a proponent of the “broken-windows” approach to policing that holds that stopping lower-level crimes leads to stopping major crimes.

The policy places the Police Department in what its officials say is a difficult position: There will be one set of enforcement rules in Brooklyn, and another in the four other boroughs.

In response to the policy, Commissioner Bratton released a statement saying that he understood that Mr. Thompson had the prerogative to decline to prosecute any criminal offense in Brooklyn.

“However, in order to be effective, our police officers must enforce the laws of the State of New York uniformly throughout all five boroughs of the city,” Mr. Bratton said. “Accordingly, the Kings County policy change will not result in any changes in the policies and procedures of the N.Y.P.D.”

Over the past 15 years, marijuana arrests in New York have soared, partly because a rising number of stop-and-frisk encounters led to searches of people’s pockets.

There were 8,150 cases in Brooklyn in which the top count was a marijuana possession charge in the year ending June 30, according to the memo on Tuesday. Marijuana arrests have decreased during the first six months of this year, compared with the same period in 2013.

The police were initially wary that the policy was a blanket one, covering every arrest, but the Police Department was mollified when it became clear that there would be a “case-by-case” review, according to a person involved in the negotiations.

Another specific concern was whether Mr. Thompson’s office would prosecute members of crews on marijuana-related arrests. Such arrests can be used by the police as part of its larger antigang strategy in specific precincts, and department officials want to preserve that option, the person said.

Police officials also pushed for the ability to make cases on someone smoking or holding lighted marijuana, which they said was a public-safety issue, particularly if the person was somewhere like a playground, a law enforcement official said.

The district attorney’s office agreed to add language in its policy that the office may prosecute a defendant charged with smoking or holding lighted marijuana in a public place.Whether they are smoking or holding marijuana, 16- and 17-year-olds will be routed through a diversion program so they “may be successfully redirected onto a healthier path,” the memo reads.

Under the new policy, those arrested for marijuana-related offenses in Brooklyn will still be taken to the precinct station house, and then be sent to central booking, where they would await the next day’s in-court arraignment in a holding cell. Or, the police may give the offender a desk appearance ticket for court on a given date.If the district attorney decides not to prosecute, and the person is in the system, the office will tell the police to free the person. If the person has received a desk appearance ticket, and the district attorney decides not to prosecute, the office will send a letter telling the person that the case will not be prosecuted and that there is no need for a court appearance. In both instances, the offender’s fingerprints will be destroyed.

The policy covers possession of marijuana in the fifth degree, a misdemeanor for either holding or burning marijuana in the open, or possessing more than 25 grams of marijuana; and unlawful possession of marijuana, which is a violation.

The wording in the memorandum seems to reflect the political nature of the negotiations; in one passage, which was not part of the draft memo, the district attorney pays homage to the police.

“The policy does not undermine the authority of the police to enforce the law,” the memo read. “This office respects the officers of the New York City Police Department.”

“We recognize that the possession of marijuana is illegal in this state, and that the police, when acting in a constitutional manner, have authority to arrest offenders who break the law.”

However, prosecutors believe the new policy will result in a better use of the office’s resources, and be more cost-effective.

But the primary reason for the new policy, the memo continues, is because the district attorney has a duty to reform and improve the administration of justice, not merely to convict.

In the majority of low-level marijuana possession cases, Mr. Thompson wrote, “obtaining a conviction against the defendant does not advance public safety with fairness and justice, and, indeed, might well sabotage that goal.”


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3) Study Finds Racial Disparity in Criminal Prosecutions
"One of the starkest disparities emerged in the prosecution of misdemeanor drug crimes like possession of marijuana or cocaine. The study found blacks were 27 percent more likely than whites to receive jail or prison time for misdemeanor drug offenses, while Hispanic defendants were 18 percent more likely to be incarcerated for those crimes."
By

Black and Hispanic defendants are more likely to be held in jail before trial and more likely to be offered plea bargains that include a prison sentence than whites and Asians charged with the same crimes, according to a two-year study of prosecutions handled by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

The study, by the Vera Institute of Justice, found that race was a significant factor at nearly every stage of criminal prosecutions in Manhattan, from setting bail to negotiating a plea deal to sentencing.

But race was not the sole factor, the study’s authors said. A number of legal considerations were found to be more important in predicting a defendant’s fate, among them the seriousness of the charge and the defendant’s arrest record.

Nicholas Turner, the president of the institute, said researchers could not determine what caused the unequal treatment. “It could be implicit bias,” he said. “It could also be race-neutral policies that end up having a particular disparate effect.”

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said he was concerned that racial disparities had cropped up, especially in the areas of pretrial detention and sentencing. He promised to move forward with “implicit bias” training for his assistants to guard against unconscious prejudices in their decision-making.

“I’m glad to know the information,” Mr. Vance said in an interview. “It’s more important that we find out, ask the question and deal directly with what is uncovered, rather than failing to ask the question at all.”

Funded by the Justice Department, the study grew out of Mr. Vance’s campaign promise to determine whether race played a role in the decisions of prosecutors. In a rare move, his office opened its books to the institute’s analysts for 2010 and 2011 and gave them unfettered access.

The study is one of the largest of its kind to be done in the United States, and its findings echoed what smaller studies had found in places like Milwaukee. The authors examined 222,542 resolved prosecutions over two years, scrutinizing data for all misdemeanors and a selection of felonies, including drug offenses.

The report comes at a time of heightened public debate across the nation about whether the criminal justice system treats people of different races equally. That debate drove the legal battle over the stop-and-frisk program in New York City and has prompted the United States attorney general to order an examination of federal convictions and sentencing guidelines.

“It is consistent with other studies,” Don Stemen, an associate professor of criminology at Loyola University in Chicago, said. “Even when controlling for all these legal factors, race still has an impact.”

One of the starkest disparities emerged in the prosecution of misdemeanor drug crimes like possession of marijuana or cocaine. The study found blacks were 27 percent more likely than whites to receive jail or prison time for misdemeanor drug offenses, while Hispanic defendants were 18 percent more likely to be incarcerated for those crimes.

The study’s authors, Besiki Luka Kutateladze and Nancy R. Andiloro, looked at five key points in a criminal case when prosecutors have significant discretion. They examined the prosecutor’s decisions about which cases to accept, which to dismiss, what to recommend at bail hearings, what plea bargains to offer and what sentences to recommend.

Race turned out to be a statistically significant factor at every stage, save the initial decision to accept cases, the study found.

Blacks were 10 percent more likely than whites to be remanded to jail before trial or to be unable to make bail. Asians fared even better than whites when it came to remaining free before trial: 24 percent of white defendants were detained, but only 14 percent of Asians were held.

Prosecutors were also found to be more likely to offer black and Hispanic defendants plea deals on misdemeanors that included jail time. Forty percent of black defendants and 36 percent of Hispanic defendants were offered plea deals involving incarceration, rather than probation or community service. That ratio for whites was 33 percent, and for Asians, 17 percent.

At sentencing, blacks were also found to be slightly more likely to be sentenced to jail than whites and Latinos, with Asians significantly less likely to receive jail terms.

Seymour W. James Jr., the attorney in chief at the Legal Aid Society, said the study “really confirms what we have been seeing for years” in bail hearings and sentencing. He said prosecutors should receive extensive training on how to counteract what he perceived might be their own unconscious prejudices.

The study’s authors noted policy decisions may cause some of the inequalities. The office’s guidelines for plea offers on misdemeanors, for instance, requires harsher offers for defendants with an arrest history. That works against defendants from heavily policed neighborhoods.

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the study raised troubling questions about the police policy in New York of making many arrests for minor offenses in high-crime neighborhoods, under the so-called broken windows theory. That policy has resulted in many black and Hispanic city residents with long arrest records, making it harder for them to make bail and receive a non-jail sentence, she said.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a historian and director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, said the racial disparities “were not as bad as one might presume,” given the predominately black and Hispanic makeup of the state prison population. The pipeline, he said, begins with the police decisions on who to arrest: about 178,000 of the 222,000 defendants in the study were black or Hispanic.

“It looks like the issue for Manhattan may be less one of what the prosecutors are doing over all, and more one of what police officers are doing,” he said.


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4) Using M.C.s and M.D.s to Promote Healthy Eating for Youths
By

Adrian Harris, known as Easy A.D. to his fans, has rapped about street life in the South Bronx as a member of the Cold Crush Brothers, a group that is among the pioneers of hip-hop.

Now Mr. Harris also raps about broccoli.

“If you think you eat healthy, say ‘me,’ ” Mr. Harris called out over a pounding bass that shook the gym at the Future Leaders Institute, a charter school in Harlem, on a recent morning. A photo of a cart laden with fruits and vegetables filled a screen behind him. “Boys and girls,” he added, “there are no Doritos on that cart.”

Mr. Harris, calling himself a “health M.C.,” aims to reach children who might otherwise tune out nutrition lessons. His vegetable rap is part of a growing public health campaign that has enlisted hip-hop artists such as Doug E. Fresh, Chuck D and DMC of Run-DMC to work alongside doctors and nutritionists in fighting obesity and related illnesses in poor communities.

The campaign is being rolled out this year in 18 cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis and San Antonio, after being tested in dozens of schools, community centers and summer camps in New York City. It was developed by Hip Hop Public Health, a nonprofit group that has also used hip-hop to call attention to strokes and Alzheimer’s disease.

The campaign, which draws upon anti-obesity research conducted at Columbia University Medical Center, seeks to make healthy eating seem cool through original hip-hop songs, comic books and cartoon-style videos. “It’s about having fun while learning,” said Dr. Olajide Williams, a Nigerian-born neurologist at the medical center and at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, who founded Hip Hop Public Health. “Their minds are unlocked by the entertainment and then we can input the knowledge and skills they need to learn.”

The campaign has won over hip-hop fans like Kellie Terry, who see it as a return to hip-hop’s roots. Once a means for those in the South Bronx to reaffirm and celebrate their culture during tough times, she said, hip-hop eventually became commercialized and associated with violence and drugs. “Bringing it back and connecting it to things we’re still struggling with and using it as a tool to lift us up is very much part of the hip-hop culture,” said Ms. Terry, executive director of the Point, a South Bronx youth center that focuses on arts and community.

The health-focused hip-hop was the idea of Dr. Williams, 44, who heard LL Cool J on the radio at an English boarding school in the 1980s and became hooked. In 2005, Dr. Williams was treating stroke patients at Harlem Hospital Center and grew frustrated that so many of them did not know the early warning signs. He was thinking that a catchy rap song might be the way to teach them when he happened to hear a patient rapping.

The patient put Dr. Williams in touch with Doug E. Fresh’s manager. Dr. Williams called every week for months before landing a meeting with the artist at a juice bar in Harlem. Doug E. Fresh came with his son, who coughed incessantly. Dr. Williams, fearing that the son might have a form of asthma (he did), spent the whole time examining him rather than making his own pitch.

Dr. Williams said he was depressed afterward, convinced he had blown his chance. But a few weeks later, Doug E. Fresh called to thank him and agreed to write a song. Three months later, he penned “Stroke Ain’t No Joke,” which spread across the Internet and in schools, and is now played around the world.

The success of that song led Dr. Williams to found Hip Hop Public Health in 2008 with Doug E. Fresh as vice president. Today, the group has a staff of 14 that works out of Harlem Hospital Center and Columbia University Medical Center. It has an annual budget of $500,000, which comes from city funds and grants from private foundations.

The anti-obesity campaign was developed with the help of an advisory board: 16 fifth graders charged with keeping the material fresh. The students came up with questions, selected the fast-food examples, and even vetted the songs and giveaways, which were upgraded at their suggestion from pencils and shopping bags to water bottles and nylon sports bags printed with “Hip Hop Heals.”

Leslie Mikkelsen, managing director of the Prevention Institute, an advocacy group that promotes community strategies to address obesity, said that hip-hop was a good way to get the attention of young people but the message needed to go hand in hand with changes in their communities — such as improving access to healthy foods in local stores — to make a lasting impact. “When they’re excited about good health, we have to help them in following through on healthy practices by making sure the community supports them,” she said.

At the Future Leaders Institute, the hip-hop campaign has reinforced the school’s own efforts to promote healthy eating through nutrition classes and a garden that produces lettuce, cucumbers and strawberries for the salad bar, said Tiffany Daley, a teacher.

Armed with microphones, Mr. Harris and Arthur Lloyd, a record producer who goes by the name Artie Green, played songs, showed videos and soon had about 150 children on their feet. Then using a game show format, it was time to take stock of what they ate. Did a burger or an apple pie have more calories? (Burger.) How many calories should you eat? What are calories?

“If it was a real doctor talking about calories, I wouldn’t pay attention because it’d be boring,” said Jaylah Williams, 9. “But it was fun and that way I got to know more about it. I feel like this helped me get in touch with healthy foods.”

Jaylah added that she hoped to shed a few pounds by staying away from calorie-rich chips, cheesy sauces and fruit juices.

When Dr. Williams, in a white coat over green scrubs, was called up by the health M.C.s, he greeted the children as “hip-hop public health ambassadors” and urged them to share what they had learned with their friends and family.

The most important thing they could do, he told them, was to save someone’s life. “That’s what I do,” he said. “The way you can do that is to keep them healthy.”


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5) I Filmed the LAPD Assaulting Me at Pro-Israel Demonstration
by Ali Abunimah
Published on Wednesday, July 9, 2014 by Electronic Intifada
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/07/09-0
Officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) assaulted me without provocation as I spoke to and filmed participants at a pro-Israel rally on the north side of Wilshire Blvd. by the Israeli consulate this evening.

I was handcuffed and threatened, and I caught it all on video.

Across the road, on the south side of Wilshire, was a Palestine solidarity rally called for by a number of peace and justice groups to protest Israel’s rampage of lethal violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

I arrived directly to the pro-Israel counter-demonstration without first having been to the Palestine solidarity rally. I wanted to speak to people and record their opinions.

As I was arriving, I heard one participant say: “A good Muslim is a dead Muslim.” I approached him and asked him, “What could make all this stop?” He answered: “Eliminate Muslims” and launched into an anti-Muslim tirade.

Another person heard him and objected to his words, telling me, “That’s not true. Terrorists are the problem,” and “I have a lot of Palestinian friends.”

We were having a conversation when, without any warning, I was assaulted by LAPD officers. I was profiled: one officer asked, “Are you with the Palestine?”

In the video, the officers claim that I had disobeyed an order. This is untrue. I was assaulted and restrained without warning and when I asked the officers to stop assaulting me and let me go, they put handcuffs on me.

One officer can be heard on the video saying, “I know you are trying to fire everyone up.” This is also untrue – I was asking questions and listening to the answers.

I believe he may have said this because he suspected that my camera was still running. An officer also said that they were trying to “keep the peace” and “keep me safe,” all while physically assaulting me.

After the video cuts, the sergeant was called. I was questioned about my political beliefs and asked, “Which side are you on?”

I answered, “I am on the side of peace and justice.” The sergeant asked, “Which side is that?”

I responded, “Which side do you think it is?”

The sergeant said they would remove the handcuffs if I agreed to leave the scene and not come back. I agreed and I was escorted across Wilshire Blvd. where I joined the Palestine solidarity rally, which appeared to have several hundred people, more than the dozens waving Israeli flags and chanting, “Who are we? Israel!”

In my book The Battle for Justice in Palestine, I write about the close cooperation between Israel and US big city police departments, including the LAPD.

In January, as Rania Khalek reported, LAPD top brass went on their most recent junket where they fell in love with Israeli drones.

I wonder if it is that cooperation that predisposes officers to see anyone suspected of being “with the Palestine” as a threat.

What is clear is that I was profiled and treated as a threat like so many Angelenos, particularly people of color.

© 2014 Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and a fellow with the Palestine Centre in Washington, DC.  Abunimah is Executive Director of The Electronic Intifada.
 
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6) A Palestinian Mother’s Fear in East Jerusalem
By RULA SALAMEH

JERUSALEM — THERE was a huge crash, and I felt the ground shake under my family’s home. We heard the first explosion just as we had finished our iftar meal ending the daily Ramadan fast and settled down in front of the television. Out the window, I could see people running in the streets of Beit Hanina, my Palestinian neighborhood. Then came a second crash, and a third.

We heard that bomb shelters had been opened in West Jerusalem, so we assumed these were rockets from Gaza.

But the only bomb shelters near us are in Jewish settlements like Pisgat Ze’ev and Hagiva Hatzarfatit in occupied East Jerusalem, and we were not going to go there, especially after the events of the past weeks. Just days ago, in apparent retribution for the killing of three Israeli youths, Jewish extremists kidnapped, tortured and murdered Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian boy one year younger than my own son, and Israeli authorities have arrested and beaten hundreds of Palestinians throughout East Jerusalem.

So we sat in our living room listening to the explosions — the sound of rockets being intercepted in the air — painfully aware that Gaza civilians would pay a heavy price for their leaders’ attempt to hit the Israeli seat of government.

I was born and raised in Beit Hanina, and I attended Bir Zeit University near Ramallah. When the first intifada started in 1987 and the Israeli military closed my university, I began working as a journalist, covering not only the stone-throwing demonstrations but also the lesser-known civil-resistance campaign to end the Israeli military occupation.

In 1989, I flew to a conference in London about education in the Palestinian territories; there I met the man who would become my husband. He was a Palestinian, too, and his family came from Nablus. But he was born and raised in Doha, Qatar, so he had never been allowed to visit the West Bank, like millions of other Palestinian refugees.

In 1994, both of our families traveled to Jordan and we celebrated our marriage in a country that was home to none of us. I moved to live with my husband in the Persian Gulf, and I became pregnant in 1996. After consulting with lawyers, I realized that I would need to go home to Jerusalem to deliver my son so that he would be issued a Jerusalem residency number, and not risk being banned from visiting the Palestinian territories, like his father.

I returned to Jerusalem alone. In a cruel twist of fate and policy, the Israeli authorities informed me that my son would not be given a Jerusalem ID as long as I remained married to his father. Because one of his parents was a Palestinian without a Jerusalem ID, my son was not entitled to inherit my residency status. After years of financially and emotionally draining legal struggle, my husband and I divorced — the strain ended not just our marriage but our relationship — and my son, Marwan, was given his identity card.

Today Marwan — whom we call Memo — is 17 years old. One week ago, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, who was 16 and who lived two minutes down the road, left his house to go to the mosque in the early morning after eating breakfast with his mother before starting the fast for Ramadan. As he was standing outside, he was grabbed by a group of Israelis in a white car, tortured and burned alive and then left in a nearby forest.

I have not been able to sleep since I heard this news. I constantly think of Memo, who often goes out with his friends to watch a football game or to pick up groceries, and I think of Muhammad’s mother, Suha, whose son went out one morning and never returned, and I think of the mothers whose sons have been arrested, beaten and humiliated by the Israeli police in the days since. Every mother I have spoken to in East Jerusalem is thinking of the same things. We are all terrified for our children’s safety. My neighborhood of Beit Hanina borders the Israeli settlements Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Yaakov. How can we continue to live like this? In September, when our children return to school, how will we let our sons and daughters walk by themselves in the mornings and evenings? How can a mother let her children out of the house, knowing now that in addition to the harassment and threats they have always faced from the Israeli police and authorities, they may be grabbed off the street and murdered?

No parent — Israeli or Palestinian, Jewish or Muslim — should have to live with such fear. Violence and repression will not make anyone’s children safer.

The situation didn’t begin with the kidnappings, and we have to pay attention to that fact. The world must hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions. For its military campaigns that have taken the lives of too many sons and mothers in Gaza over the past few days and in the West Bank over the past few weeks. For its blatant disregard for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem — the lack of bomb shelters is just one of many basic services that the Israeli authorities fail to provide to Palestinians living under their rule. And for the entire occupation, whose violence and cruelty is the dark context for so much of what has happened over the past few weeks.

Seventeen years ago I returned to Jerusalem so that my son would not be denied the right to live in the city of his ancestors. I never thought I would be so frightened for him to do so.


Rula Salameh is a journalist and outreach manager at Just Vision, an organization that documents the stories of Palestinians and Israelis who use nonviolence to end the occupation and conflict.

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7) Fleeing Gangs, Children Head to U.S. Border
By

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Anthony O. Castellanos disappeared from his gang-ridden neighborhood on the eastern edge of Honduras’s most dangerous city, so his younger brother, Kenneth, hopped on his green bicycle to search for him, starting his hunt at a notorious gang hangout known as the “crazy house.”

They were found within days of each other, both dead. Anthony, 13, and a friend had been shot in the head; Kenneth, 7, had been tortured and beaten with sticks and rocks. They were among seven children murdered in the La Pradera neighborhood of San Pedro Sula in April alone, part of a surge in gang violence that is claiming younger and younger victims.The killings are a major factor driving the recent wave of migration of Central American children to the United States, which has sent an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors across the Texas border. Many children and parents say the rush of new migrants stems from a belief that United States immigration policy offers preferential treatment to minors, but in addition, studies of Border Patrol statistics show a strong correlation between cities like San Pedro Sula with high homicide rates and swarms of youngsters taking off for the United States.


“The first thing we can think of is to send our children to the United States,” said a mother of two in La Pradera, who declined to give her name because she feared gang reprisals. “That’s the idea, to leave.”

Honduran children are increasingly on the front lines of gang violence. In June, 32 children were murdered in Honduras, bringing the number of youths under 18 killed since January of last year to 409, according to data compiled by Covenant House, a youth shelter in Tegucigalpa, the capital.

With two major youth gangs and more organized crime syndicates operating with impunity in Central America, analysts say immigration authorities will have a difficult time keeping children at home unless the root causes of violence are addressed.

In 2012, the number of murder victims ages 10 to 14 had doubled to 81 from 40 in 2008, according to the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. Last year, 1,013 people under 23 were murdered in a nation of eight million.

Although homicides dropped sharply in 2012 after a gang truce in neighboring El Salvador, so far this year murders of children 17 and under are up 77 percent from the same time period a year ago, the police said.

Nowhere is the flow of departures more acute than in San Pedro Sula, a city in northwestern Honduras that has the world’s highest homicide rate, according to United Nations figures.

Between January and May of this year, more than 2,200 children from the city arrived in the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics, far more than from any other city in Central America.

More than half of the top 50 Central American cities from which children are leaving for the United States are in Honduras. Virtually none of the children have come from Nicaragua, a bordering country that has staggering poverty, but not a pervasive gang culture or a record-breaking murder rate. “Everyone has left,” Alan Castellanos, 27, the uncle of Anthony and Kenneth, said in an interview in late May. “How is it that an entire country is being brought to its knees?”

He said the gangs operated with total impunity. “They killed all those kids and nobody did anything about it,” Mr. Castellanos said. “When prosecutors wanted to discuss the case, they asked us to meet at their office, because they were afraid to come here. If they were afraid, imagine us.”

The factors pushing children to migrate vary, according to an analysis of their home cities by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Guatemalan children who arrive in the United States are more often from rural areas, suggesting their motives are largely economic. The minors from El Salvador and Honduras tend to come from extremely violent regions “where they probably perceive the risk of traveling alone to the U.S. preferable to remaining at home,” the analysis said.

“Basically, the places these people are coming from are the places with the highest homicide rates,” said Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. “The parents see gang membership around the corner. Once your child is forced to join, the chances of being killed or going to prison is pretty high. Why wait until that happens?”

A confluence of factors, including discounted rates charged by smugglers for families, helped ignite the boom, he said. Children are killed for refusing to join gangs, over vendettas against their parents, or because they are caught up in gang disputes. Many activists here suggest they are also murdered by police officers willing to clean up the streets by any means possible.

In the case of the Castellanos family, the police said the older boy was a lookout for the gang and had decided to quit. The order to kill him, the police said, came from prison.

Several arrests have been made. Héctor A. Medina, 47, who the police said lived at an abandoned house controlled by the 18th Street gang, where Kenneth was killed, was charged in the boys’ deaths. “It’s a serious social problem: any children born in this neighborhood are going to get involved in a gang,” said Elvin Flores, a police inspector in charge of La Pradera. “Our idea is to lower crime every day. We need a state policy to involve kids from when they are little to go to school.”
But gangs, which rob, sell drugs locally, kidnap people and extort money from businesses, often recruit new members at schools.

In some cities, blocks are empty because gangs demanding extortion payments have forced out homeowners. Many people have had to move within the country in a displacement pattern that experts liken to the one seen in Colombia’s civil war.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that from 2008 to 2013, the number of asylum claims filed in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Belize increased sevenfold.

Most were from people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the three nations with large numbers of migrants now arriving at the United States border.

Refugee advocacy organizations have urged the State Department to treat the children arriving at the United States border as refugees, and proposed a processing system where asylum claims could be reviewed in Central America and those accepted could move safely to the United States or countries willing to accept them, as was done in countries such as Haiti and Iraq. They have not yet received a response, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said.

Mr. Obama urged Congress on Wednesday night to pass a $3.7 billion budget supplement that would, among other things, beef up border security, hasten deportations and help Central American nations address security problems. “The best thing we can do is make sure the children can live in their own countries, safely,” he said.

During a recent late-night visit to the San Pedro Sula morgue, more than 60 bodies, all victims of violence, were seen piled in a heap, each wrapped in a brown plastic bag. While picking bullets out of a 15-year-old boy shot 15 times, technicians discussed how they regularly received corpses of children under 10, and sometimes as young as 2.

Last week, in nearby Santa Barbara, an 11-year-old had his throat slit by other children, because he did not pay a 50-cent extortion fee.

“At first we saw a lot of kids who were being killed because when the gang came for their parents, they happened to be in the car or at the location with them,” said Dr. Darwin Armas Cruz, a medical examiner who works the overnight shift. “Now we see kids killing kids. They kill with guns, knives and even grenades.”

Dr. Armas said his family was thinking of migrating, too.

Meridith Kohut contributed reporting from San Pedro Sula, and Gene Palumbo from San Salvador.

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8) Death Toll Rises in Gaza, as Hamas Hits New Targets in Israel
By ISABEL KERSHNER and FARES AKRAM

JERUSALEM — The death toll from Israel’s aerial offensive in Gaza rose on Thursday, while rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal enclave reached new targets in Israel.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said that about 20,000 reservists had been called up and that preparations for a possible ground operation were being completed, but that the current focus of the ground forces was to uncover tunnels in Gaza used by militants for attacks.As the air campaign entered its third day, the Palestinian death toll rose to at least 67, according to officials in Gaza. Airstrikes overnight on a house in Khan Younis and a cafeteria on the beach killed at least 15 Palestinians, Gazan officials said. According to the officials, one airstrike hit a car used by a local news agency bearing media signs, killing the driver, Hamed Shehab, 27. The Israeli military said it had also hit three Islamic Jihad operatives that it said were involved in manufacturing medium-range rockets. In another strike, the military said it had hit an operative for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza, saying he was involved in firing rockets against Israel.

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

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

In one case, when seven people died and 25 were wounded in the Israeli strike on the house of the Kaware family in Khan Younis on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the warnings had been given, and the attack had commenced after the Israelis had seen people vacating the premises. In the short time between the last warning and the airstrike, people went back in, Colonel Lerner told reporters on Thursday, adding that it was too late to cancel the missile. “It is a tragedy indeed and not what we intended,” he said.

A member of the family said earlier that neighbors had come in to “form a human shield.”

The Israeli military said that the targeted houses belonged to Hamas members involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had been used as operation centers.

Colonel Lerner said he did not have details yet on the circumstances of the bombing of the beach cafe, called Fun Time, where customers had gathered to watch a World Cup game. He said he also did not have details on the attack on the vehicle marked with media signs.

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

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

The current air campaign has been Israel’s most intensive in Gaza. Colonel Lerner said that the Israeli military had struck at least 750 locations in the first 48 hours of the operation, compared with a total of 1,450 locations attacked during eight days of cross-border fighting in November 2012.

“What we are trying to do for now is to take full advantage of the aerial assault,” Colonel Lerner said. “The ground option needs to be the last option and only if absolutely necessary.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Wednesday that “the operation will be expanded and will continue until the firing at our communities stops and quiet is restored.”

Militant groups in Gaza, which have fired more than 350 rockets into Israel since the operation began in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to the military, continued their attacks Thursday. At least one rocket was intercepted over Tel Aviv by the Iron Dome missile defense system. Shrapnel rained on the city but caused no injury.

The military said at least three more rockets had hit civilian communities in the Negev desert, more than 50 miles from Gaza, and that areas around the town of Netivot were hit.

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Fares Akram from Gaza.

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9)  Campaign Atmosphere Amid Detroit Vote on Debt Plan
By and STEVEN YACCINO

DETROIT — Until now, this city’s journey through bankruptcy has been a drama played out mostly by lawyers and mediators in courtrooms and conference rooms. But as thousands of city workers and retirees approach a Friday deadline to cast votes on the city’s plan to emerge from debt — a plan that depends in part on cutting their benefits — Detroit has taken on the feel of an all-out election campaign.

There are leaflets, newspaper and radio ads, and “Vote Yes” buttons. There is even a truck plastered with homemade signs that meanders through neighborhoods and that blares its “Vote No” message over loudspeakers.

The vote has divided retirees. It has stirred arguments between friends and tensions between leaders of retiree groups and some members. It has generated dissent over the very issue — benefits — that had often united workers. Some see it as a choice between practicality and principle: Accept the city’s offer now, or be dealt a draconian plan later.“This is not the typical situation,” said Craig A. Barbarosh, a bankruptcy lawyer with the firm Katten Muchin Rosenman who is based in Costa Mesa, Calif., and represents some creditors. “I’ve never seen a case like this where there’s this active a campaign to solicit votes.”

In an effort to summon support for the city’s plan, city and state officials, as well as some union and retiree group leaders, have carried out an orchestrated drive. They argue that the plan will lessen the level of potential cuts to pension benefits and speed Detroit’s emergence from bankruptcy. City officials sound confident about the thousands of votes that have come in so far. “You Can’t Eat Principles,” say hundreds of buttons passed out here, as did a full-page advertisement recently in The Michigan Chronicle.

A less organized cast of opponents pooled limited funds for radio and television ads as well as the truck, which circled the federal courthouse building last week, pressing anyone in earshot to reject the city’s plan. “This is not a grand bargain! This is grand theft!” Cecily McClellan, who worked for the city for 24 years, bellowed into a microphone.

In municipal bankruptcies, some of the creditors, which can include workers and retirees, banks and other financial institutions, must vote in favor of a city’s plan for shedding debt and remaking itself for a judge to consider approving it. Generally, bankruptcy experts said, parties are barred from exerting undue or excessive influence on those with votes to cast in such bankruptcy cases, but the limits of those guidelines can be somewhat murky. Detroit’s plan can proceed to the judge as long as at least one class of creditors — but not necessarily the workers and retirees — votes yes.

But there is more riding on the vote by city workers and retirees. Hundreds of millions of dollars in pledged foundation and state money to spare deeper cuts from pensions and to save the city’s art collection depends on approval of the city’s plan by workers and retirees. If they vote against it, the pledged donations vanish. This may be the proponents’ most convincing argument: Vote for the city’s deal, or cuts — as much as 4.5 percent from some retirees’ pensions as well as smaller than expected cost-of-living increases — will get far worse.

“The city is broke,” said Shirley V. Lightsey, the president of the Detroit Retired City Employees Association, who has lately pushed for a yes vote in appearances beside Gov. Rick Snyder, in testimony before state lawmakers and in conversations with fellow retirees who have bombarded her with phone calls since she came out in favor of the so-called grand bargain with such gusto. “We have the best deal we feel will save the retirees from other cuts,” she said.

If they go along with the deal, retirees and workers would also agree to give up lawsuits challenging cuts to their pensions. Though a federal judge here has made it clear that he believes pensions may be cut in bankruptcy, the Michigan Constitution includes protections, and opponents of the city’s plan say they cannot believe their colleagues would even consider ceding legal challenges.

“They’re trying to push people into cutting their own throats by voting yes,” said William Davis, a retired water department employee who said he mailed in his no vote last week. “They may have the establishment behind their side, but that doesn’t mean we just roll over.”

For many retirees, this has, they say, been the most personal vote they have ever taken part in. Some have said they are scared and torn, afraid of doing themselves more damage by voting no, and reluctant to reveal their voting plans to others.

Sherianne Davis, 62, who worked as a typist and analyst for the city, said she wrestled with a choice that pitted her sense of self-preservation against her belief that the city was wrong to cut pensions. She said her monthly pension check brought about $1,200. The elaborate ballot she received in May gave her two choices. If she voted yes, her pension would drop to roughly $1,150 a month. If she voted no, her monthly check would fall to less than $900.

In the end, Ms. Davis said she sent in a vote in favor of the city’s plan. “My vote directly affects how I live for the rest of my life,” she said.

There are peculiarities to this vote that show this is, in truth, no political race bound to ordinary election rules, and that has stirred deep suspicion for some about the process. Kevyn D. Orr, the city’s emergency manager, inserted letters into the ballot packages encouraging a yes vote. The vote is being tallied thousands of miles away, by a private California company paid by the city. And the city is updated regularly on the vote count, a fact that became clear in late May when city officials were quoted in news reports as saying that early votes were coming in more than 2-to-1 in favor. The judge, Steven W. Rhodes, has since discouraged the city from revealing numbers before a final count is done. A summary of the vote count must be filed with the court by July 21.

“It is a campaign of sorts,” said Bill Nowling, a spokesman for Mr. Orr, who said the city had yet to turn to radio ads or other measures because the results they were seeing have been generally positive. A letter sent in recent days by local officials of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and an 11th-hour deal struck with the Detroit Police Officers Association, both among the last of the objecting labor groups, were seen by city officials as an important step toward convincing union members to vote yes.

On the other side, a recent ad features an older woman telling her grandson about pension cuts, explaining that protections are lost if people vote to give them away. “I may have to move in with you,” she says. 

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10) N.S.A. Spied on 5 American Muslims, a Report Says
By and MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON — A new report based on documents provided by Edward J. Snowden has identified five American Muslims, including the leader of a civil rights group, as having been subjected to surveillance by the National Security Agency.

The disclosure of what were described as specific domestic surveillance targets by The Intercept online magazine was a rare glimpse into some of the most closely held secrets of counterespionage and terrorism investigators. The article raised questions about the basis for the domestic spying, even as it was condemned by the government as irresponsible and damaging to national security.

The report was based on what The Intercept described as a spreadsheet of 7,485 email addresses said to have been monitored from 2002 to 2008, and one of its writers was Glenn Greenwald, a primary recipient of the trove of documents leaked by Mr. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor.Among the five identified by The Intercept as having been subjected to surveillance were Hooshang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor who is the president of the American Iranian Council, a public policy group that works on diplomatic issues regarding relations with Iran, and Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil-rights organization.

Also named were Asim Ghafoor, a defense lawyer who has handled terrorism-related cases; Faisal Gill, a former Department of Homeland Security lawyer who later did some legal work with Mr. Ghafoor on behalf of Sudan in a lawsuit brought by victims of terrorist attacks; and Agha Saeed, the national chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, which supports Muslim political candidates.

The documents did not say what the suspicions or the evidence were against the men that prompted the apparent surveillance.

In interviews on Wednesday, several of the men denied wrongdoing, and Mr. Ghafoor said he believed his Muslim faith was a factor in his being monitored. “I try not to play the race card,” he said. “But there’s really no other explanation.”

Mr. Amirahmadi, a dual citizen of the United States and Iran, said he understood why the American government might want to investigate him in an era of heightened nerves; such surveillance is used not just to investigate people suspected of being terrorists, but also those suspected of being foreign agents trying to influence American policy.

Describing himself as a secular Muslim peace activist, he noted that he had tried to run for president of Iran and has organized meetings between prominent Americans and Iranian leaders. But he said he had always been open about his views.

“I am not surprised; I’m not angry,” he said, adding, “I’m honored to say that after years of looking closely at me, they have found nothing.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issues about 1,800 orders annually for domestic surveillance. To obtain a court order to wiretap an American, the government must convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe the target is engaged in a crime on behalf of a foreign power; non-Americans need only be suspected of being foreign agents.

None of the five have been charged with a crime in connection with the apparent monitoring.

The government refused to confirm whether or why any of the five had been monitored. Several dozen rights organizations sent a letter to President Obama on Wednesday expressing concerns about the potential for “discriminatory and abusive surveillance,” but also acknowledged that “we do not know all of the facts,” and asked for “the information necessary to meaningfully assess” the report.Gadeir Abbas, a staff lawyer with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the apparent surveillance of its executive director an outrage.

“It’s but the latest indication that the N.S.A. is spying on Americans based on the exercise of their constitutional rights,” he said.

In a joint statement, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence strongly denied such accusations, pointing to the court oversight. It added, “On the other hand, a person who the court finds is an agent of a foreign power under this rigorous standard is not exempted just because of his or her occupation.”In 2007, the Justice Department named the Council on American-Islamic Relations as an unindicted co-conspirator in its prosecution of a Muslim charity later convicted of funneling money to Hamas. A redacted screen shot suggests that Mr. Awad’s email was monitored from Nov. 9, 2006, to Feb. 1, 2008.

James McJunkin, a former assistant director of the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism division, declined to comment on any particular target. But in general, he said, the FISA process allowed the government to follow up on allegations that an organization might be involved in aiding a terrorist group.

“We’ve got to determine whether that is in fact true,” he said. “If you’re targeting an individual for FISA collection, you are doing so because you believe he has specific intelligence that can either prove or disprove a linkage to terror financing.”

Mr. Abbas, the Council on American-Islamic Relations lawyer, said, “We have been subject to intensive scrutiny for years, and that scrutiny has resulted in nothing other than smears.”

The Intercept reported that the spreadsheet contained a column headed “nationality” and that 202 of the email addresses belonged to “U.S. persons,” 1,782 belonged to “non-U.S. persons,” and 5,501 were listed as unknown or left blank. It also identified email addresses for two other Americans on the list whose ties to a terrorist organization are well known: Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both of whom were killed by an American drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.

The Intercept report, which suggested that anti-Muslim prejudice contributed to the surveillance, also published what it said was part of a 2005 training document about how to format a memo seeking permission to wiretap someone. It used the fake name “Mohammed Raghead.”

The White House said it had ordered a review, and Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, said, “N.S.A. has not and would not approve official training documents that include insulting or inflammatory language.”

Mr. Gill, the former Homeland Security lawyer, said he had reviewed his old emails, looking to see what the government had collected about him, but could not find anything that explained it. He said his security clearance was never suspended, and The Intercept said other lawyers who did legal work for Sudan were not on the monitoring list.

Mr. Gill said he thought the government was unfairly suspicious of Muslim lawyers who took such cases. As a government lawyer, he said, he had faith in the legal process required before surveillance is approved, but now, knowing he was monitored, “It just calls the process into question.”

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Investigation Department said Wednesday that more arrests were expected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many experts say a cultural shift is also underway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It also exports vehicles from South Africa.

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

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15) ISRAEL:  STOP THE KILLING OF PALESTINIANS
UNITED STATES:  END ALL AID TO ISRAEL
FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE
July 10, 2014
https://unacpeace.org/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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B. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND
ONGOING CAMPAIGNS


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Transport Workers Protest Oakland Schools Censorship of Mumia

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

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

Stop the Censorship!
Restore the Urban Dreams web site!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The statement above was published at:

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

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

www.laboractionmumia.org

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 AN URGENT FUNDRAISER FOR LYNNE STEWART'S 

MEDICAL NEEDS CONTINUES
http://lynnestewart.org/

LYNNE STEWART HAS JUST BEEN DENIED 

MEDICAL BENEFITS. SHE CAN'T RE-APPLY UNTIL JULY! 

SHE IS IN URGENT NEED OF OUR HELP NOW!

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

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

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

SEND LYNNE A DONATION TO:

On line at:

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

Or by USPS to:

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



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

 


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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 SIGN LORENZO JOHNSON'S FREEDOM PETITION

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


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

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


 www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org

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

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

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

The campaign will provide information on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sireen Khudairy Appeal Update.

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

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

http://freesireen.wordpress.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq.
   October 25, 2013

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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 SAVE CCSF!


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

Cartoon by Anthonty Mata for CCSF Guardsman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-End long-term solitary confinement

-Provide adequate and nutritious food

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

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

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

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Wealth Inequality in America

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

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

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

March 1, 2013

Alternet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Rights Do I Have?

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

Standing Up For Free Speech

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

What if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?

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

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

Do I have to answer questions?

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

Do I have to give my name?

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

Do I need a lawyer?

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

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

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

Can agents search my home or office?

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

What if agents have a search warrant?

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

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

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

What if I speak to government agents anyway?

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

What if the police stop me on the street?

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

What if police or agents stop me in my car?

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

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

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

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

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

What if I receive a grand jury subpoena?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can I call my consulate if I am arrested?

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

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

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

What should I do if I want to contact DHS?

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

What Are My Rights at Airports?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What If I Am Under 18?

Do I have to answer questions?

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

What if I am detained?

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

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

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

Can my backpack or locker be searched?

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

Disclaimer

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

NLG National Hotline for Activists Contacted by the FBI

888-NLG-ECOL

(888-654-3265)

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Prisonradio.org

Write to Mumia:

Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335

SCI Mahanoy

301 Morea Road

Frackville, PA 17932

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Rachel Wolkenstein

August 21, 2011 (917) 689-4009

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL ILLEGALLY SENTENCED TO

LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE!

FREE MUMIA NOW!

www.FreeMumia.com

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



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"A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against

Censorship" book

https://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=25

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Justice for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace: Decades of isolation in Louisiana

state prisons must end

Take Action -- Sign Petition Here:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/justice-for-albert-woodfox-and-herm\

an-wallace

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WITNESS GAZA

http://www.witnessgaza.com/

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Write to Bradley

http://bradleymanning.org/donate

View the new 90 second "I am Bradley Manning" video:

I am Bradley Manning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-P3OXML00s

Courage to Resist

484 Lake Park Ave. #41

Oakland, CA 94610

510-488-3559

couragetoresist.org

"A Fort Leavenworth mailing address has been released for Bradley Manning:

Bradley Manning 89289

830 Sabalu Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027

The receptionist at the military barracks confirmed that if someone sends

Bradley Manning a letter to that address, it will be delivered to him."

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-42811

This is also a Facebook event

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=207100509321891#!/event.php?eid=2071005093\

21891

Courage to Resist needs your support

Please donate today:

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590

"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning

has been defending and supporting our Constitution." --Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon

Papers whistle-blower

Jeff Paterson

Project Director, Courage to Resist

First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq

Please donate today.

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590

P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly

becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to

make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!

Please click here to forward this to a friend who might also be interested in

supporting GI resisters.

http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

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The Battle Is Still On To

FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610

www.laboractionmumia.org

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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!

Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper

Chronicle Editorial

Monday, December 13, 2010

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL

Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's

death row!

http://www.savekevincooper.org/

http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255

URGENT ACTION APPEAL

- From Amnesty International USA

17 December 2010

Click here to take action online:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&\

b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084

To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to

http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success

For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):

http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf

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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work

The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's

work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown

on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l

Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected

over the past nine years.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl

Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial

support to carry out its work.

To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to

http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html

and follow the simple instructions.

Thank you for your generosity!

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D. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:

[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:

http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]

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Checkpoint - Jasiri X 

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Exceptional art from the streets of Oakland:

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

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

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

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NYC RESTAURANT WORKERS DANCE & SING FOR A WAGE HIKE

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

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

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

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Fukushima Never Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Production Of Labor Video Project

P.O. Box 720027

San Francisco, CA 94172

www.laborvideo.org

lvpsf@laborvideo.org

For information on obtaining the video go to:

www.fukushimaneveragain.com

(415)282-1908


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1000 year of war through the world

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

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Anatomy of a Massacre - Afganistan

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

Afghans accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder

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

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

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

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

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

confronts the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Film By SBS

Distributed By Journeyman Pictures

April 2012

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

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

ng-of-trayvon-martin.html?hp

SPD Security Cams.wmv

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

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

Terror Drills

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

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Private prisons,

a recession resistant investment opportunity

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

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

"Thought Crimes"

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

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Common forms of misconduct by Law Enforcement Officials and Prosecutors

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

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Organizing and Instigating: OCCUPY - Ronnie Goodman

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

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Rep News 12: Yes We Kony

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

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The New Black by The Mavrix - Official Music Video

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

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Japan One Year Later

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

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The CIA's Heart Attack Gun

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

un-.html

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The Invisible American Workforce

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

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Labor Beat: NATO vs The 1st Amendment

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

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


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The Battle of Oakland

by brandon jourdan plus

http://vimeo.com/36256273

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Officers Pulled Off Street After Tape of Beating Surfaces

By ANDY NEWMAN

February 1, 2012, 10:56 am

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

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

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This is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!

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

strategy

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

and Brown people in the United States.

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

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

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

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

voters.

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

2012.

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FREE BRADLEY MANNING

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/national-call-in-for-bradley

I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding

the Bradley Manning petition I signed:

"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning

"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused

WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People

platform on WhiteHouse.gov.

The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may

decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or

similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or

agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice

system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of

Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the

specific case raised in this petition...

That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about

Bradley:

BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!

"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be

charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the

President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with

a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!

Obama on FREE BRADLEY MANNING protest... San Francisco, CA. April 21, 2011-

Presidential remarks on interrupt/interaction/performance art happening at

fundraiser. Logan Price queries Barack after org. FRESH JUICE PARTY political

action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmtUpd4id0&feature=youtu.be

Release Bradley Manning

Almost Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)

Written by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded

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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

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

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School police increasingly arresting American students?

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

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FYI:

Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"

The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are

plotted visually and audibly on a world map.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408

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We Are the 99 Percent

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to

choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are

suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay

and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1

percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?

OccupyWallSt.org

Occupytogether.org

wearethe99percentuk.tumblr.com

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

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We Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools

YouTube:

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

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In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at

GM that began December 30, 1936:

According to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip

isn't one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story," it was

Roosevelt who saved the day!):

"After a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support

of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National

Guard. But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were

pointed at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers

alone. For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress

of their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'

- Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58

But those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight

at the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the

strike was really won!

'With babies & banners' -- 75 years since the 44-day Flint sit-down strike

http://links.org.au/node/2681

--Inspiring

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HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS (revised edition).mov

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

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ONE OF THE GREATEST POSTS ON YOUTUBE SO FAR!

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

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ILWU Local 10 Longshore Workers Speak-Out At Oakland Port Shutdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JUpBpZYwms

Uploaded by laborvideo on Dec 13, 2011

ILWU Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of

Oakland called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank

and file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and

the interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.

For more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go to

http://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/

For further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.be

Production of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org

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UC Davis Police Violence Adds Fuel to Fire

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

19 November 11

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8485-uc-davis-police-violence-add\

s-fuel-to-fire

UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4&feature=player_embedded

Police PEPPER SPRAY UC Davis STUDENT PROTESTERS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I&feature=player_embedded

Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis

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

*---------*

UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walks to her car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ0t9ez_EGI#!

Occupy Seattle - 84 Year Old Woman Dorli Rainey Pepper Sprayed

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

*---------*

THE BEST VIDEO ON "OCCUPY THE WORLD"

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

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Shot by police with rubber bullet at Occupy Oakland

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

*---------*

Copwatch@Occupy Oakland: Beware of Police Infiltrators and Provocateurs

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

*---------*

Occupy Oakland 11-2 Strike: Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tu_D8SFYck&feature=player_embedded

*----*

Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest

were actually undercover Quebec police officers:

POLICE STATE Criminal Cops EXPOSED As Agent Provocateurs @ SPP Protest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiisMMCFT0&feature=player_embedded

*----*

Quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=player_embedded

G20: Epic Undercover Police Fail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJ7aU-n1L8&feature=player_embedded

*----*

WHAT HAPPENED IN OAKLAND TUESDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 25:

Occupy Oakland Protest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlPs-REyl-0&feature=player_embedded

Cops make mass arrests at occupy Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R27kD2_7PwU&feature=player_embedded

Raw Video: Protesters Clash With Oakland Police

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpO-lJr2BQY&feature=player_embedded

Occupy Oakland - Flashbangs USED on protesters OPD LIES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqNOPZLw03Q&feature=player_embedded

KTVU TV Video of Police violence

http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html

Marine Vet wounded, tear gas & flash-bang grenades thrown in downtown

Oakland

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

Tear Gas billowing through 14th & Broadway in Downtown Oakland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4Y0pwJtWE&feature=player_embedded

Arrests at Occupy Atlanta -- This is what a police state looks like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStWz6jbeZA&feature=player_embedded

*---------*

Labor Beat: Hey You Billionaire, Pay Your Fair Share

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

*---------*

Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA48gmfGB6U&feature=youtu.be

Voices of Occupy Boston 2011 - Kwame Somburu (Paul Boutelle) Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKZpOk7TyM&feature=related

*---------*

#Occupy Wall Street In Washington Square: Mohammed Ezzeldin, former occupier of

Egypt's Tahrir Square Speaks at Washington Square!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziodsFWEb5Y&feature=player_embedded

*---------*

#OccupyTheHood, Occupy Wall Street

By adele pham

http://vimeo.com/30146870

*---------*

Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change

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

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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!

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

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

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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." Thomas Jefferson

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Japan: angry Fukushima citizens confront government (video)

Posted by Xeni Jardin on Monday, Jul 25th at 11:36am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=player_embedded


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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand

Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.

"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."

"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse

Sharkey, Vice

President, Chicago Teachers Union

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

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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale

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

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