Thursday, August 20, 2015

bauaw2003 BAUAW NEWSLETTER, THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015






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Starting this September, Rising Tide North America is calling for mass actions to shut down the economic and political systems threatening our survival.

Already, hundreds of thousands are streaming into the streets to fight back against climate chaos, capitalism and white supremacy.

This wave of resistance couldn't be more urgent. To stop climate chaos we need a phenomenal escalation in organizing, participation and tactical courage. We need a profound social transformation to uproot the institutions of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, the systems that created the climate crisis. And we need to link arms with allies fighting for migrant justice, dignified work and pay, and an end to the criminalization and brutal policing of black and brown bodies.

We need to #FloodTheSystem.

In the lead up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, in December, we will escalate local and regional resistance against systems that threaten our collective survival. Together, we will open alternative paths to the failing negotiations of political elites.

This is not another protest. It is a call for a massive economic and political intervention. It is a call to build the relationships needed to sustain our struggles for the long haul. To build popular power along the intersections of race, class, gender and ability. To collectively unleash our power and change everything.

The Story So Far

Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.

Fast food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson, protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation. Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People's Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down the heart of New York's financial district.

Across the country, and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.

These moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.

Rising Tide North America and its allies call on communities, networks, affinity groups and organizations across the continent to join together this Fall to rapidly escalate the pace and scale of the anti-capitalist climate justice movements.

We need to wash away the root causes of climate change -- capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism. These systems enable the domination of people and Earth. They place gains for the elite before the well being of our communities.

To build the scale of movements necessary to take on this challenge, we need everyone. Using sustained, coordinated direct action we can bring more people into a movement for radical social transformation than ever before.

The upcoming United Nations meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP 21) at the end of the year provide us with an opportunity. Framed as climate negotiations they are really about capitalism and the corporate elites. We have an opportunity to focus the debate on capitalism itself as negotiators wedded to and benefiting from the status quo refuse to discuss the systems that drive the crisis. This is a natural moment to preemptively highlight community resistance and radical alternatives in advance of another colossal failure of international leadership. Through our combined action we can turn the failure of these critical talks into a moment in which the systemic nature of the crisis moves to the center and in which our movements begin to connect and collaborate.

In the past, the climate movement has repeatedly tried days of action and one-day marches. While these have built important relationships, they have not created the sustained movement swells we need. To lay the groundwork for exponential movement growth we are asking groups to convene Action Councils, like those forming in the Pacific Northwest, California, Montana, Northeast and elsewhere, with the intention of coming together to organize sustained actions beginning in late Summer, continuing through November and beyond.

With luck, waves of mobilizations breaking across the continent and world will build off each other to create a flood of resistance to fossil fuel extraction, capitalism and colonialism.

Vision

#FloodTheSystem invites the Rising Tide network, the larger climate justice movements, and other non-climate focused groups to create a flood of massive economic and political disruption of the systems that allow the climate and economic crisis to continue to escalate. This is not a simple call to action or day of action, it's a long-term process. We want to organize a series of actions that would:
  • Build a more robust anti-capitalist movement that clearly defines climate change as a symptom of capitalism. Specifically, we hope to support and catalyze regional organizing networks and relationships to challenge extreme energy infrastructure and the systems of oppression that enable it.
  • Build long term local, regional and continental networks that can continue to coordinate, build connections between movements, and escalate these fights in 2016 and beyond.
  • Begin to work closely with other movements through the analysis of where our struggles intersect and through a commitment to anti-oppressive organizing practices.
  • Share, implement and gain experience in innovative models of horizontal movement structures and mass democracy in organizing that will serve radical forces for the long haul.
  • Create a flood of energy within regions that inspires others to join in with organic, spontaneous actions and organizing. Regional blocks of escalating action are already planned that will lead into, and play off, each other. More emerge everyday.
  • Preemptively highlight community resistance and real alternatives to the fossil fuel economy ahead of the inevitable colossal failure by global elites at the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.

Principles

#FloodTheSystem will organize and act according to the following principles.
  • Anti-capitalism/colonialism/racism/patriarchy - We see the climate crisis as a symptom of hierarchical social systems based upon domination and exploitation of lands, and predominately people of color. Addressing the crisis at its roots means joining with and supporting those who are fighting for liberation from these and other oppressive systems, and for their replacement with relations based upon equity, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship.
  • Grassroots Led, NGOs in Support Role - Non-profits and NGOs often function to co-opt and defuse resistance into reform-based avenues which are amenable to the social systems we are ultimately seeking to dismantle and replace. The priorities of this mobilization should be driven by groups grounded in and accountable to the communities most impacted by white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, with NGOs in a support role -- not the other way around.
  • Community-Based Alternatives - Corporations, nation-states, and multilateral institutions like the United Nations are integral pillars upholding global capitalism and colonialism. We see alternatives to extreme energy and the climate crisis arising out of social struggles which challenge and seek to replace these institutions and their logics. However, we recognize that there may be important defensive struggles within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as fighting the expansion of carbon markets or advancing state recognition of Indigenous land rights.


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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence

Sign the Petition:
https://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=40574&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_DeathPenalty~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1507EADP1&ea.url.id=432762&forwarded=true

Urge Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In 1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In 2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

In solidarity,

James Clark
Senior Death Penalty Campaigner
Amnesty International USA

News Updates

  • Death Row Stories
    Kevin Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be aired on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to be viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.
Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up
- from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
 
Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin.  He has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence.  In a dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d 581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:

  The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their bedsides?

  The sole surviving victim of the murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr. Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's not the man who did it."

  Josh Ryen's description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.

  These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.

  The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been discredited…         (Continue reading this document at: http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

     This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

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Free Albert Woodfox!

On June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement. He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party. Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice. Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1506EAIAR2&ea.url.id=414689&forwarded=true

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Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

 

Amnesty for ALL those arrested
demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!
Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard"
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's $150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.  

The legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black residents.

They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.

 Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.

Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Download PDF of Petition 

http://www.answercoalition.org/amnesty_for_all_those_arrested_demanding_justice_for_freddie_gray?utm_campaign=baltimore_amn1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

Amn3.pngMayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202

Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos


Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:


Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS


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Mumia Abu-Jamal Has Hepatitis C:
Demand Treatment Now!



Mumia Abu-Jamal has Hepatitis C-- and the prison is refusing treatment. We are going back to court to demand critical care, and we can't do it without you. Will you support Mumia getting immediate treatment by giving $250, $100 or even $25 today? Every gift and action makes the difference for Mumia getting the care he needs. Thank you, Noelle.

The time to act is now.

Five months after being rushed to the hospital, new medical tests show that Mumia has active Hepatitis C. But prison officials are refusing to treat him for it.

With your help, that changes- today.

Mumia Abu-Jamal remains weak, ill, and in the prison infirmary.

Five months after being admitted to the hospital with lethal blood sugar levels and in renal failure, he continues to have a debilitating skin rashes, open wounds and swelling across his lower extremities. Because of our relentless demands for medical testing and treatment, we finally know the likely cause of his severe ailments: Hepatitis C.

But what is news to us is not news to his jailers. Prison officials have known that Mumia was Hep. C positive since 2012-- and have done nothing.

Even now that prison doctors know that Mumia's Hep. C is active -from testing they performed solely because we demanded it- they are refusing to provide treatment.

Today, we are going back to court to demand justice for our brother. 

Mumia's legal team (Bret Grote of Abolitionist Law Center and Robert Boyle of New York) is filing an amended lawsuit today, 'Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes', to include medical neglect and demand immediate treatment.

Meanwhile, Prison Radio is working tirelessly to make sure Mumia's legal and medical team have the necessary resources to get Mumia the critical care he needs.

And we can't do it without you.

We need your help today to ensure that the prison treats Mumia's Hepatitis C now!

The world came together for Mumia when he fell unconscious five months ago. Because of our international outcry for justice and the critical steps we took, Mumia is alive today.

Now, we need your help to get Mumia a treatment plan. Can you fight for Mumia's right to medical care by giving $100, $25 or $250 today?

Your donation will:
File an amended lawsuit 'Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes' to include medical neglect
Get Mumia a full Hepatitis C work up and treatment plan

Grant Mumia's consulting physicians access to directly examine Mumia 

Fuel a public campaign to bring Mumia back to health

Support the demand for treatment of Hepatitis C for all Pennsylvania prisoners
Please join us in demanding immediate medical treatment by giving $25, $100 or even $1,000 now. Every gift and action matters.

bit.ly/fight4mumia
I Demand Treatment NOW!
Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,
Noelle Hanrahan
Director, Prison Radio
To give by check:
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141
Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222


Prison Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25 years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the air. 

Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:

     Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
     Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech


Copyright © Prison Radio

www,prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

Our mailing address is:

Prison Radio PO Box 411074, SF CA 94141

http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=247585f092e945ff55b9a1bb2&id=e113d0b6d0&e=0107d76ccd

Donate Now

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222


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The  Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizes Support Internationally:
No Execution by Medical Neglect!

International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal

June 2, 2015

Mumia Abu-Jamal was recently sent back to prison after having been hospitalized for the second time. There are some reports that his health is improving. He said to Suzanne Ross of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal that "if there had not been an international outcry about the lack of appropriate treatment, in fact AGAINST the 'treatment' that was bringing him so close to death, he was sure he would not be alive today".

In some good news, he was also told by the prison doctor that his biopsy results came back negative.
However, neither Mumia nor his wife, lawyers or consulting doctors have been seen the actual medical reports detailing his condition. The Department of Corrections refuses to hand over his medical records, claiming that they don't have to hand them over because there is litigation to have them released! Denying Mumia and his family his medical records is an outrage!
We would like to inform you about some recent actions taken by unions around the world on behalf of Mumia.

- Unite, the largest union in the UK, representing over 1.4 million members, wrote letters to Governor Tom Wolf, Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and Legal Counsel Theron Perez protesting Mumia's treatment.

- The International Dockworkers Council, representing 90,000 dockworkers from affiliated unions around the world, wrote an appeal to the labor movement calling for action on behalf of Mumia.
- The Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific sent a protest letter to Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel.

We hope that you will continue to take action on behalf of Mumia. Please call and email Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and demand the following:

1) Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! He should be freed immediatel
2) Confirm what Mumia's medical condition is. Release his medical records to his family and lawyers!

3) Allow Mumia to be given medical treatment from a doctor of his choice. His doctor should be allowed to conduct an on-site medical examination, to communicate by phone with Mumia, and to communicate freely with prison medical staff.

4) Allow Mumia daily visits from his family, friends and lawyers!

5) Conduct an independent investigation of healthcare treatment inside the Pennsylvania prison system!DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, SECRETARY JOHN WETZEL 717 728 4109

We are also attaching a sample union resolution for you to use as a template. Please consider submitting it to your union and asking them to take action on behalf of Mumia. We would also be happy to work with you and make a presentation to your union or community group about his condition.

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jam


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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
 
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at work updating the website and developing an even more formidable and dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system, which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence. Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the 20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately, you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be certified in different work.

The month of the hearing has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom, Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

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

 Email: Through JPay using the code:
              Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
                                     or
              Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com

Have a wonderful day!
- The Team to Free Lorenzo Johnson


freelorenzojohnson.org

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 Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/


On December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge's approval, repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.

Checks can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney.  Mail them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI 49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...) ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2 days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this racist."

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

Contributions for Rev. Pinkney's defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Or you can donate on-line at bhbanco.org.

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COURAGE TO RESIST

 http://couragetoresist.org/

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks' whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning's release from military prison.

It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage.

Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea's clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

101 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-0101

The Judge Advocate General

2200 Army Pentagon

Washington, DC 20310-2200

Army Clemency and Parole Board

251 18th St, Suite 385

Arlington, VA 22202-3532

Directorate of Inmate Administration

Attn: Boards Branch

U.S. Disciplinary Barracks

1301 N. Warehouse Road

Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304

Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:

The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's sentence is reduced.  The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help.

A suggested message: "Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of being true to her conscience.  I urge you to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time served."  Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!


Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org


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B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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1) Community Seeks Answers After Officers Shoot Trenton Boy
By JASON GRANT  
AUG. 14, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/15/nyregion/community-uneasy-after-trenton-boy-is-shot-by-2-officers.html?ref=nyregion

TRENTON — It was the start of a violent weekend in this capital city of 85,000.

On Friday, Aug. 7, Radazz Hearns, 14, was walking with friends near an open field across from the Prospect Village apartments on Louise Lane after 10 p.m. Responding to reports of gunfire in that area, three police officers got out of their vehicle and questioned the group, according to investigators from the state attorney general's office. Radazz took off running, according to the authorities and witnesses. Two police officers chased Radazz and opened fire, hitting him in the legs and buttocks. Radazz was released from the hospital on Friday, one week after the shooting.

What remains in dispute, and is the source of deepening anxiety among some residents and civic leaders, is the contention by the state attorney general's office, which is investigating the shooting, that Radazz was reaching into his waistband as the officers chased him. The authorities also said they found a loaded 22-caliber handgun on the ground near the scene of the shooting.

But in the neighborhoods of Trenton, a long-troubled city that saw several shootings during the Aug. 7 weekend, the prevailing narrative is different. On Thursday, at a community meeting in a large Baptist church, some among the more than 150 people who attended expressed doubt that Radazz, who is black, was carrying a gun or that he had reached into his waistband in a threatening way. They wanted to know more.

Some people said that as he was being carried to an ambulance, Radazz had yelled at the officers: "Why did you have to shoot me?" Others, along with the Hearns family's lawyer, Samuel A. Anyan Jr., said Radazz had not been armed. In addition, Mr. Anyan and others asked why the gun recovered was not found until 12 hours after the shooting, despite dozens of investigators combing the scene. Mr. Anyan said Radazz was shot seven times and that the handgun, which was discovered under a car, "was not even near the path" or direction the boy had run.

At the end of the meeting, which was held at Shiloh Baptist Church and lasted about two and a half hours, about 30 people encircled Radazz's mother, Slimes Jackson, 32, and other family members in a hug while praying.

"I want to know what my son wants to know," Ms. Jackson said. "Why did they shoot him?"

The refrain at the meeting, which drew several times as many people as a similar meeting on Tuesday, was that investigators with the attorney general's Shooting Response Team were not being forthcoming with information, including the names of the officers involved. Several elected officials, including Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat who represents central New Jersey, said the community deserved more information. She called for a federal investigation.

On Friday night, a spokesman for the United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, said the office was closely watching the state investigation and communicating with John J. Hoffman, the acting attorney general. While some at the meeting on Thursday discussed organizing a protest, they said they were still seeking answers about the encounter and did not want to see the type of unrest that has occurred in places where unarmed black men have been shot by police officers.

"We might need a march, a protest rally," the Rev. Lukata Mjumbe, co-chairman of the United Mercer Interfaith Organization, a Trenton-based group that focuses on community organizing, said during the meeting. "That might be some sort of direct action that will bring attention to this."

"People need to be aware of what happened," he said. "Mike Brown was shot seven times, and he's not with us anymore. And this shooting here occurred on the eve, on the weekend, of the one-year anniversary of the Mike Brown shooting" in Ferguson, Mo.

Soon afterward, Mayor Eric Jackson said his efforts to learn more about the investigation had been stymied.

"I want a transparent, full-fledged investigation," he said, "soup to nuts, from the very beginning to the very end, on every question that has been asked."

The attorney general's office provided a news release about the investigation and other basic information, though Mr. Hoffman's spokesman did not return calls on Friday.

In a phone interview on Friday, Capt. Stephen Jones, a state police spokesman, said: "Any of these investigations need to be done thoroughly and meticulously, so that all of the information can be put together. You don't want to rush something as important as this. So speed is going to take a back seat to accuracy."

Despite the violence over the Aug. 7 weekend, the numbers of shootings and resulting homicides in Trenton are down this year compared with the same period last year. According the attorney general's office, there had been 74 shootings with nine homicides in the city in 2015 as of Aug. 9, compared with 122 shootings with 20 homicides during the same period in 2014.

Near the end of the meeting on Thursday, James Hearns, an uncle of Radazz, told those gathered: "He was walking home on a Friday night, on a very nice night, with his friends. Whatever may have occurred, he didn't deserve to get shot seven times. The facts don't add up."


 

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2) Brooklyn Man Awarded $4 Million After 2009 Rooftop Fall in Police Chase
By AL BAKER  
AUG. 14, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/15/nyregion/brooklyn-man-awarded-4-million-after-2009-rooftop-fall-in-police-chase.html?ref=nyregion

The impact from the fall, on Aug. 22, 2009, was undeniable: A Brooklyn man, Brian D. Martin, fell more than 30 feet to the ground, fracturing his back in several spots and shattering his left heel.

How Mr. Martin came to fall was the subject of a nearly three-week civil trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn that ended Thursday with Mr. Martin being awarded $4.15 million from the New York Police Department.

In its decision, the jury affirmed Mr. Martin's version of events, in which two plainclothes officers, Alex Bakalis and Jose Cofresi, had pursued him to the roof of his building, at 225 Hoyt Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn. And while Mr. Martin was hanging from a brick parapet, one of the two officers struck Mr. Martin's fingers, the court papers said, causing him to lose his grip more than 30 feet above the street and knock down an air conditioner while falling.

Jurors also agreed that Mr. Martin was falsely arrested after he had fallen from the roof. The award included money to cover the "permanent effect of his injuries" and medical expenses over the next 45 years, or until Mr. Martin is in his mid-70s.

A day after the ruling, Mr. Martin, 31, sat in his lawyer's office in Lower Manhattan and described daily bouts of pain. He must sleep with his foot elevated to take pressure off his heel. A six-inch rod fusing several vertebrae in his back restricts his mobility. He worries about the degenerative effects that may build with age.

"As I get older, my son gets older," he said, speaking of his 3-year-old son, Brian Jr. "And basically, the more things he's going to want to do with me, the less I'm going to be able to do."

Mr. Martin was initially charged with reckless endangerment and trespassing, but the charges were dropped after the Brooklyn district attorney's office declined to prosecute the case.

His lawyer, Seth A. Harris, said he would ask the inspector general for the New York Police Department, and the department itself, to review the evidence in the case, which he said began as a "racially biased" street stop by two anti-crime unit officers, even though the five-year statute of limitations to seek charges against the officers had elapsed.

Nicole Turso, a spokeswoman for Philip K. Eure, the inspector general, said in an email on Friday that "the office has no comment at this time." Police officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the verdict.

A spokesman for the city's Law Department, which represented the city and the police at trial, said in a statement, "We're disappointed in the verdict and we are considering our options."

The events on Aug. 22, 2009, Mr. Martin said, began around 6 p.m. as he walked back to the Gowanus Houses after a haircut. He recalled thattwo men in a car yelled, "Hey, you, come over here." He kept going. When the men emerged with "guns pointing in my direction," he said, "I just ran, right away," not realizing they were officers.

He ran to the building where he had lived for two years, in a ground-floor apartment with his girlfriend, and went up to the roof. An arrest report said Mr. Martin "did jump from rooftop," damaging the air conditioner and causing it to fall. But during the trial, Mr. Cofresi, who has since been promoted to detective, testified that the account in the report was inaccurate.

"Is that sentence true or not?" Mr. Cofresi was asked, according to a transcript of the proceedings Mr. Harris provided.

"No, it's not true," he replied.

The police report said the officers initially tried to stop Mr. Martin "for a large bulge in his waistband," which appeared to be the outline of a firearm. But Mr. Martin said he had no gun, and Mr. Harris said none was found.

On Friday, Mr. Martin said the encounter "changed everything" for him.

He was absent from work and lost his apprenticeship in the sheet-metal workers union. On unemployment, he made what Mr. Harris called a "stupid mistake" and pleaded guilty in 2011 in federal court to conspiracy to sell crack cocaine. He was released in October 2013, after 27 months in prison, and has since been working for a bank as a loan broker.

He said he understood police officers' mission to protect people, having been a victim of street crime himself.

"I believe that police need to patrol the areas," he said. "I just think they're too aggressive. That's all, they're just too aggressive."
 

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3) Inmate’s Death Follows Reports of Abuse at a New York State Prison
By and

On the evening of April 21 in Building 21 at the Fishkill Correctional Facility, Samuel Harrell, an inmate with a history of erratic behavior linked to bipolar disorder, packed his bags and announced he was going home, though he still had several years left to serve on his drug sentence.

Not long after, he got into a confrontation with corrections officers, was thrown to the floor and was handcuffed. As many as 20 officers — including members of a group known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad — repeatedly kicked and punched Mr. Harrell, who is black, with some of them shouting racial slurs, according to more than a dozen inmate witnesses. “Like he was a trampoline, they were jumping on him,” said Edwin Pearson, an inmate who watched from a nearby bathroom.

Mr. Harrell was then thrown or dragged down a staircase, according to the inmates’ accounts. One inmate reported seeing him lying on the landing, “bent in an impossible position.”

“His eyes were open,” the inmate wrote, “but they weren’t looking at anything.”

Corrections officers called for an ambulance, but according to medical records, the officers mentioned nothing about a physical encounter. Rather, the records showed, they told the ambulance crew that Mr. Harrell probably had an overdose of K2, a synthetic marijuana.

He was taken to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and at 10:19 p.m. was pronounced dead.

In the four months since, state corrections officials have provided only the barest details about what happened at Fishkill, a medium-security prison in Beacon, N.Y., about 60 miles north of New York City. Citing a continuing investigation by the State Police, officials for weeks had declined to comment on the inmates’ accounts of a beating.

An autopsy report by the Orange County medical examiner, obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Mr. Harrell, 30, had cuts and bruises to the head and extremities and had no illicit drugs in his system, only an antidepressant and tobacco. He died of cardiac arrhythmia, the autopsy report said, “following physical altercation with corrections officers.”

The manner of death: Homicide.

Previous Reports of Violence

No officers have been disciplined in connection with the death, officials said. A classification of homicide is a medical term that indicates the death occurred at the hands of other people, but it does not necessarily mean a crime was committed.

Inmate witnesses at Fishkill say they are the ones who have been punished. Several described being put into solitary confinement and threatened with violence after speaking with Mr. Harrell’s family, their lawyers and with news reporters.

The Times documented similar allegations of abuse from inmates at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., where in June two convicted murderers escaped, resulting in a three-week manhunt. There, inmates described being beaten and choked with plastic bags by corrections officers seeking information about the escapees. Many were then thrown into solitary confinement.

The prison building where Mr. Harrell died has long been singled out as a violent place. In 2013, the Correctional Association of New York, a 171-year-old inmate advocacy group with a legislative mandate to inspect New York State prisons, published a report documenting “harassment and provocation” by officers working in Building 21 from 3 to 11 p.m. This was the same time frame when Mr. Harrell died. The association, which found similar problems in 2005, briefed officials with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in fall 2013, including the acting commissioner, Anthony Annucci, as well as Fishkill’s superintendent, William J. Connolly, who resigned this month.

Even so, inmates said, the problems have persisted. Five weeks before Mr. Harrell’s death, David Martinez, an inmate in Building 21 who was serving time for attempted murder, among other charges, filed a grievance saying he was being assaulted and harassed by officers, and asking that the officers on that shift “be split up.” In a subsequent letter, he described them as “a group of rogue officers” who “go around beating up people.”

In July, another inmate, Rickey Rodriguez, said that officers beat him so severely that he lost his two front teeth and had to be hospitalized. Interviewed a little more than a week after he was released from prison, Mr. Rodriguez, who was serving time for attempted murder, was still covered with cuts and bruises, and the white of his right eye was stained red with blood. “They go out of their way to pick and choose to beat on guys,” he said.

The State Police plan to turn over the evidence gathered to the Dutchess County district attorney’s office “in the very near future,” said Beau Duffy, an agency spokesman. The corrections department said it was cooperating with the State Police.

“Anyone found to have engaged in any misconduct or in any legal violations will be disciplined and prosecuted,” the department said in a statement.

The Times pieced together the events leading to Mr. Harrell’s death from 19 affidavits and letters written by inmates and obtained through the law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, which is representing Mr. Harrell’s family. Most of the inmates shared their affidavits on the condition that their names not be used, because they said they feared retribution from corrections officers. Three agreed to be interviewed with their names made public.

According to Luna Droubi, a lawyer at the firm, at least nine of the inmates who saw what happened had been placed at some point in solitary confinement. She said that the firm would soon file a lawsuit in connection with the death, and that there was a need for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate.

The inmates witnessed the encounter from several vantage points, including a day room and bathroom just a few feet away. Two described being at the bottom of the staircase and seeing Mr. Harrell come falling down.

Inmate witnesses are typically viewed with skepticism by investigators, but the accounts from Fishkill are strikingly consistent. Inmates there are serving sentences for felonies, such as drug crimes and murder, but have earned the right to take part in programs like work release.

Mr. Harrell also had a history of heart disease and drug abuse, which the autopsy report said contributed to his death.

The day he died, several inmates described him as being depressed and withdrawn. Ibrahim Camara said he found Mr. Harrell sitting alone, watching television and asked what was wrong. “I said, ‘Is it your mom, family or something?’” Mr. Camara recalled in a phone interview from prison. “He shook his head yes.” Mr. Harrell’s mother had died in November.

Around 8:30 that night, Mr. Harrell — whose nickname was JRock — told two officers that his wife and sister were coming to pick him up and take him home, according to one inmate’s affidavit.

His earliest release date from prison was September 2020.

The officers called for medical and mental health assistance but could not reach anyone, the inmate reported. Soon after, the inmate said that two more officers arrived. “I believe JRock panicked after seeing all those officers surrounding him,” the inmate wrote. “JRock jumped up and ran.”

Mr. Camara said he was in the day room, watching a playoff game between the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers, when he heard a commotion in the hallway. “Me and other inmates, we hear the walls shaking, doom, doom, doom, doom,” he recalled. “Somebody opened up the door and looked outside, and said, ‘Yo, that’s JRock they got out there.’”

He was on the floor, face down and handcuffed, several inmates said. In short order, a large group of officers converged around him. The inmates in their affidavits and letters identified nine officers by name as being involved.

“I saw the officers kicking him, jumping on his head multiple times and screaming, ‘Stop resisting,’ even though I didn’t see him moving,” wrote Mr. Pearson, who has since been released after serving two years on a weapons charge.None of the affidavits or letters mentioned Mr. Harrell’s fighting back or speaking during the encounter. Several said that once he was on the floor, handcuffed, he stopped moving, and a few of the inmates speculated he may have already been dead by then.

Indeed, Mr. Camara said inmates were surprised that Mr. Harrell, who was over six feet tall and weighed 235 pounds, did not try to defend himself. “People was even mad, I was mad,” he said. “You’re a big guy and you let these people literally kill you.”

The inmates said that during the encounter, an officer they identified as Robert Michels appeared to have a medical emergency. Mr. Pearson, who later identified Officer Michels through a Facebook photo, said he saw the officer “rip open his shirt and he was gasping for air and grabbing his chest.”

Officers went to attend to Officer Michels, who was soon carried out on a stretcher, inmates said.

Identifying the Guards

Mental Illness

No one could say for sure what set off the confrontation with Mr. Harrell. There were no surveillance cameras in that area, according to inmates, and corrections officials acknowledged that there are only a few for the entire prison.

James Miller, a spokesman for the corrections officers’ union, the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, said in an email last month that Mr. Harrell was “acting violently and appeared delusional as a result of apparently ingesting drugs.” While trying to subdue him, one guard had several ribs broken, Mr. Miller said.

Officials have described abuse of K2 by inmates as a problem throughout the state prison system.

On Monday, Mr. Miller wrote in an email that the union was “reviewing all the facts before rushing to judgment.”

“Rather than simply relying on allegations made by a handful of violent convicted felons,” he wrote, “we will continue to work with our partners in law enforcement to ensure a resolution to this tragic incident.”

Mr. Harrell had served several stints in prison for drug crimes starting in 2002. He had five disciplinary infractions while incarcerated, including one days before his death for possessing contraband, according to prison records. None involved violence.

Inmates and family members say that any erratic behavior more likely stemmed from his mental illness. In the weeks before his death, they said, he had been depressed. In 2010 he learned he had bipolar disorder and was hospitalized, according to medical records. His wife, Diane Harrell, said that when he was not taking his medication, he would go through the house turning over family photographs for fear they were staring at him. He also believed the television was talking to him, she said.

While Mr. Harrell lay still on the floor, officers periodically walked by, kicking him and hitting him, Mr. Camara said.

Most of the inmates could identify the officers by last names only, which they spelled in a variety of ways in their affidavits. In a database of New York State employees, seethroughny.net, there are several Fishkill officers who appeared to match the guards most often named by the inmates as being directly involved in the encounter. They are Thomas Dickenson (named by 10 of the inmates), John Yager (10), Officer Michels (nine), Bryan Eull (five) and a white woman they knew only as “Ms. B” (four).

They also identified the ranking officer at the scene as Sgt. Joseph Guarino. Reached by telephone, Sergeant Guarino confirmed he was present that night but said he could not comment.

Neither the corrections department nor the union would confirm the names of the officers. Reached by phone, several of the officers declined to comment. Others did not respond to voice mail messages, emails or messages sent through Facebook.

Through the years, Sergeant Guarino, 60, has been sued several times by inmates accusing him of brutality. One case was settled by the state in 2012 for $60,000 and another in 2011 for $65,000. In a 2011 deposition, he said inmates typically filed about 30 grievances against him a year and referred to him by the nickname Sergeant Searchalot.

Four inmates wrote that after Officer Michels was taken away, they heard Sergeant Guarino order officers to throw Mr. Harrell down the stairs.

“Harrell came rolling sideways down the stairs,” Mr. Martinez wrote, adding that he had a “bedsheet tied all around his body and he was in mechanical restraints.”

Mr. Martinez said that two officers he identified as Mr. Eull and Mr. Dickenson then tried to put Mr. Harrell into a wheelchair but had difficulty lifting him.

Mr. Harrell, he wrote, “was not responsive at all” and “kept sliding off the wheelchair.”

Another inmate who was nearby said that Officer Eull ordered him to stop looking, and then grabbed him and pushed him into a corner. “He then told me, ‘You better forget what you saw here if you ever want to make it home,’” the affidavit said.

An inmate looking out of his cell wrote that he saw Mr. Harrell being taken away. The inmate wrote that he had seen 10 to 15 corrections officers “surrounding a wheelchair being wheeled out of the building with a white sheet draped over a body that could have been naked because I seen bare feet dragging on the ground.”

According to records from the ambulance service, a call came reporting a possible overdose at the Fishkill prison at 9:16 p.m.; the ambulance team arrived there at 9:30 p.m. and reached Mr. Harrell by 9:34 p.m. “Staff reports that pt. was possibly smoking K2 and became very aggressive, shortly after he went unresponsive and into cardiac arrest,” the records said.

The next morning at 7:30, Mr. Harrell’s sister, Cerissa Harrell, received an anonymous call from an inmate in Building 21. “He called me and said, ‘Sam got hit the night before and they took him and he hasn’t been back and nobody has heard or seen from him.’”

“You could hear the franticness in his voice,” she said.

A half-hour later, she said, someone from the corrections agency called to say her brother was dead.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.





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4) President Obama’s Department of Injustice
By ALEC KARAKATSANIS

WASHINGTON — LAST month, President Obama used his clemency power to reduce the sentences of 46 federal prisoners locked up on drug-related charges. But for the last six years, his administration has worked repeatedly behind the scenes to ensure that tens of thousands of poor people — disproportionately minorities — languish in federal prison on sentences declared by the courts, and even the president himself, to be illegal and unjustifiable.

The case of Ezell Gilbert is emblematic of this injustice. In March 1997, he was sentenced to 24 years and four months in federal prison for possession with the intent to distribute more than 50 grams of crack cocaine. Because of mandatory sentencing laws, Mr. Gilbert was automatically sentenced to a quarter-century in prison, though even the judge who sentenced him admitted that this was too harsh.

At his sentencing, Mr. Gilbert noted a legal error that improperly increased his sentence by approximately a decade based on a misclassification of one of his prior offenses. In 1999, without a lawyer, he filed a petition seeking his release. A court ruled against him.

Nearly 10 years later, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in another prisoner’s case, confirming that Mr. Gilbert had been right. A public defender helped him file a new petition for immediate release in light of this new decision.

Mr. Obama’s Justice Department, however, convinced a Florida federal judge that even if Mr. Gilbert’s sentence was illegal, he had to remain in prison because prisoners should not be able to petition more than once for release. The “finality” of criminal cases was too important, the department argued, to allow prisoners more than one petition, even if a previous one was wrongly denied.

A federal appellate court disagreed, and in June 2010, three judges set Mr. Gilbert free. The judges rejected the administration’s argument as a departure from basic fairness and explained that it simply could not be the law in America that a person had to serve a prison sentence that everyone admitted was illegal. Mr. Gilbert returned home and stayed out of trouble.

Here’s where it gets interesting. There are many people like Mr. Gilbert in America’s federal prisons — people whose sentences are now obviously illegal. Instead of rushing to ensure that all those thousands of men and women illegally imprisoned at taxpayer expense were set free, the Justice Department said that it did not want a rule that allowed other prisoners like Mr. Gilbert to retroactively challenge their now illegal sentences. If the “floodgates” were opened, too many others — mostly poor, mostly black — would have to be released. The Obama administration’s fear of the political ramifications of thousands of poor minority prisoners being released at once around the country, what Justice William J. Brennan Jr. once called “a fear of too much justice,” is the real justification.

In May 2011, the same court, led by a different group of judges, sided with the original judge, saying that the “finality” of sentences was too important a principle to allow prisoners to be released on a second rather than first petition, even if the prison sentence was illegal. A contrary rule would force the courts to hear the complaints of too many other prisoners. Mr. Gilbert was rearrested and sent back to prison to serve out his illegal sentence.

Judge James Hill, then an 87-year-old senior judge on the appellate court in Atlanta, wrote a passionate dissent. Judge Hill, a conservative who served in World War II and was appointed by Richard M. Nixon, called the decision “shocking” and declared that a “judicial system that values finality over justice is morally bankrupt.” Judge Hill wrote that the result was “urged by a department of the United States that calls itself, without a trace of irony, the Department of Justice.”Judge Hill concluded: “The government hints that there are many others in Gilbert’s position — sitting in prison serving sentences that were illegally imposed. We used to call such systems ‘gulags.’ Now, apparently, we call them the United States.”

Two years later, the Justice Department used a similar tactic to overturn an entirely different federal appellate court decision that could have freed thousands of prisoners convicted of nonviolent crack cocaine offenses — again, mostly impoverished and mostly black — on the grounds that their sentences were discriminatory and unjustifiable. The administration again did its work without fanfare in esoteric legal briefs, even as the president publicly called the crack-cocaine sentencing system “unfair.”

In 2013, several years after sending him back to prison, Mr. Obama granted Mr. Gilbert clemency, and the president has recently won praise for doing the same for several dozen other prisoners of the war on drugs. Mr. Obama even visited a federal prison last month, staring into the cells — emptied for his visit — of some of the men whom his own administration has needlessly kept there.

But Mr. Obama must take steps to further undo the damage that he has done. He should use his clemency power to release all those currently held in a federal prison on an illegal sentence. And he should appoint a permanent special counsel whose job would be to review new laws and federal court cases on a continuing basis to identify and release other prisoners whose sentences retroactively become clearly unlawful. That the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons have never created such a position is an outrage. If we fail to demand change now, this moment for justice may be lost.

Alec Karakatsanis is a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of Equal Justice Under Law, which litigates on behalf of indigent clients.


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5) Depiction of Amazon Stirs a Debate About Work Culture
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Amazon recently surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the country. It is ceaselessly inventive, unafraid to try something and fail. Its ambitious goal: sell everything to everyone everywhere. It is also figuring out how to extract the most from its employees, whose dedication and obsession is the real engine behind the company’s success.
A recent article in The New York Times —“Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace” — offered a glimpse into what could be described as a workplace that is both bruising and thrilling. It gave accounts of workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises who said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover in Amazon’s intense and fast-paced workplace.
The reaction to the story was voluminous and spirited. On websites like Reddit and Hacker News, tech workers, Amazon employees and friends and relatives offered thoughtful and detailed reflections of their experiences at the company. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, also weighed in.
Many of the more than 4,000 comments posted to nytimes.com recounted what life was like at Amazon.
Dan Kreft’s was among them. He joined the company in 1999 after a short career in basketball, first at Northwestern University and then around the world after college. An old pair of his size 21 shoes, he wrote in a follow-up email to The Times, became one of the prizes handed out to recipients of the company’s Just Do It award — a recognition of an employee taking the initiative to do something above and beyond the call of duty. He said he left last month, after putting in 15 years, 10 months and 11 days at the company.
“Amazon is a great place to learn from fantastically skilled and intelligent people. It’s a terrific place to work on systems on a scale that most companies can’t even fathom. It’s a thrilling place to work if you thrive on pressure and love being a part of something huge and powerful.
It’s a great place to work if you don’t have any interests outside of work and if you’re a corporate-ladder-climber type. But corporate culture doesn’t really promote treating its employees like human beings who have feelings and a life outside of work. At Amazon, you’re just a login...a face on a badge...“head count”...a row in a database in a giant air-conditioned room filled with servers, just waiting to have your bit flipped. So go ahead, Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History...but defenestrate any silly notions that you matter as a person.
I wish Jeff Bezos and Company continued success, but I wonder how much more successful they could be if they would only show the same kind of obsessive care about their employees as they do about their customers.” — Dan
Another Amazon employee put it a bit more succinctly — if not more dramatically:
“As someone who worked at Amazon headquarters in Seattle for over 5 years I can tell you that it is an obscenely stressful place to work. I wouldn’t wish a job at Amazon on my worst enemy. Everyone I knew was on drugs for depression, drank too much and had severe sleeping problems — forget about having any life outside of Amazon, 75-plus hour work weeks are the norm. It’s absolutely brutal. I didn’t even realize how disgustingly abusive it was until I left.” — Frmr Amzn

“I still struggle with the Amhole nature within,” a Seattle technology recruiter who worked there for four years wrote, referring the pejorative Seattle nickname for employees, “resisting the desire to verbally castrate my current colleagues who are not up to my vision of competence.”

Dozens of current and former employees, as well as loved ones, wrote in to talk about how difficult it was to maintain a work/life balance. Many pointed out that the two year-mark was often the cut off for how long they could last there. As one Amazon customer put it:
“We are terribly naive to think that the instant gratification services we demand — kitty litter in an hour or less, groceries and other services — do not have an impact to the employees hired to support our immediate whims.” — misterboh
The depiction of life at Amazon left many commenters wondering whether they should continue shopping with the company. Not everyone, however, was so quick to lambaste it and its practices.
“America needs more companies like Amazon that demand more from employees and rewards them accordingly. Our nation’s Silicon Valley culture isn’t perfect and can burn people out, but is also the reason we have Apple, Microsoft, and Google keeping us competitive.” — SeattleGuy
A recent hire noted that for him, the grueling environment feels like it’s worth it in terms of career development — an attitude he believes is shared among other young engineers in the tech industry. He expects to be pushed, he said.
“While it may seem appalling to many readers, all you need to see the light is a switch in mindset. If you think of work as working for somebody else, you will be appalled at the work conditions at any high performing company. But if you understand that what you do, no matter who you do it for, is at the end of the day for yourself, all this starts to make sense.
“The skills I develop while working will be mine to keep for life. I’m not here to put in the hours for a paycheck. I’m here being paid to learn.” — Jumbo
Some current Amazon employees said their experiences matched the most upbeat ones described in the original article.
A European employee wrote that he found the company unusually supportive.
”The pace is fast but it brings a sentiment of accomplishment and satisfaction to the people working here. I have never seen anybody sick or in pain not being treated in the most humane way possible and I cannot imagine anybody at Amazon condoning the behaviors you have described. These were bad managers that do not deserve to work for us. Working for Amazon has made me raise my standards and I’m grateful for it.” — Bernard K
Another Amazon employee echoed that experience. He pointed to the climate inside the company as a place that fosters projects that can have a huge impact on millions of people.
“I’ve never seen someone cry at their desk. I’ve taken a family leave with no negative repercussions. I’ve given (and as a manager, received) tons of anonymous feedback, most of it positive or constructive, which would be normal to submit at almost any company with a collaborative workforce.” — Josh
Josh didn’t deny feeling stressed or overworked or being pushed at times for deadlines that struck him as unreasonable. He did, however, suggest that working there might be “unsustainable.”



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6) Shell Wins Final Permission for Arctic Oil and Gas Drilling
By CORAL DAVENPORT



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7) Virginia: Ex-Police Officer Charged With Murder in Shooting
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



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8) Chelsea Manning Found Guilty Over 'Contraband' — But Won’t Face Solitary Confinement
By VICE News
August 18, 2015 
https://news.vice.com/article/chelsea-manning-found-guilty-over-contraband-but-wont-face-solitary-confinement?utm_source=vicenewsemail

Chelsea Manning, the former US Army soldier who received a 35-year sentence in military prison for providing classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been found guilty again, this time for possessing unapproved reading material and expired toothpaste.

According to a tweet sent from Manning's official account, she was found guilty on all four charges she faced, but will avoid the indefinite solitary confinement that she reportedly could have received as a possible punishment.

Manning, 25, is being held at the Army's Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. The latest charges stemmed from the discovery of an expired tube of anti-cavity toothpaste in her cell following a routine inspection. Because the toothpaste was expired, Manning faced charges for "medicine misuse," which Nancy Hollander, the attorney working on Manning's appeal, decried as "utterly ridiculous."

The former Army private was also charged with possessing "prohibited property" for reading material found in her cell. The banned literature including the issue of Vanity Fair with Caitlyn Jenner on the cover, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai's book I am Malala, and LGBT magazines.

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9) One Palestinian’s Refusal to Eat Puts Israel in a Bind
By and DIAA HADID

JERUSALEM — A single Palestinian prisoner’s determination to starve himself to death unless he is freed is flummoxing Israel’s legal, medical, political and security systems.

The prisoner, Mohammad Allan, a 31-year-old lawyer and Islamic Jihad member who has not eaten since June 16, regained consciousness on Tuesday, after spending four days on a ventilator and receiving fluids, salts and potassium intravenously. On Wednesday, Israel’s Supreme Court will consider his demand for immediate release from administrative detention, the controversial tactic in which more than 300 Palestinians and a handful of Israelis are being held without charge or trial.The case has received extraordinary attention because it unfolded as Israel narrowly passed a law last month allowing the force-feeding of hunger strikers. That spawned outrage by its own medical association, whose doctors refuse to participate in the law’s application, and international human-rights groups that have also condemned the practice at Guantánamo Bay and in other Western nations.

The law itself is fraught with complexity that makes it difficult to apply and, according to several experts on bioethics, was unnecessary because Israel already allows the treatment of competent patients against their will.

Conservative ministers pushed the law as essential to prevent Israel from being held hostage by hunger strikers, and to prevent an outbreak of Palestinian violence should Mr. Allan die. Instead, the ensuing debate has only underscored how Israel, so deft at deflecting rockets, has been stymied by nonviolent resistance efforts like the mounting cultural, academic and economic boycott movement.

“It’s much more difficult to fight the war of images and messages and pictures than to fight in the war zone itself,” said Yoaz Hendel, a right-leaning Israeli commentator who reluctantly supported the force-feeding law. “It’s a very serious dilemma — it’s between bad and worse.”

Mouin Rabbani, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, said hunger strikes have been effective as “a very specific and focused campaign against administrative detention,” because so many Palestinians have family members who have been imprisoned in Israel.

“They recognize it could be their son or daughter — for that reason it has a very strong mobilizing capacity among Palestinians, and that’s something immediately recognizable for Israel,” Mr. Rabbani said. “That’s why when push comes to shove, the Israelis tend to make concessions in order to prevent a death — it puts Palestinian society on the verge of an explosion.”

Prisoners have been rejecting food as protest since the British suffragists a century ago. In the 1980s, 10 striking Irish Republican Army prisoners were allowed to die of starvation in British prisons, leading to worldwide condemnations and a reinvigorated I.R.A.

The United States, Australia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland allow force-feeding of prisoners, and the European Court of Human Rights in 2005 ruled that it was permissible in certain circumstances. But the Malta declaration of the World Medical Association called it “inhuman and degrading” and “never ethically acceptable.”

In Israel, at least eight Palestinians have been released in recent years after lengthy hunger strikes, said the prisoner-rights group Addameer. The most famous cases involved Khader Adnan, another Islamic Jihad activist, who was freed in June after a 55-day strike, and in 2012 after he went 66 days without eating.

“Medical feeding is intended on the one hand to save a person’s life, and on the other hand to prevent a situation in which terrorists will have an effective pressuring tool to use against the country,” Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security and a prime backer of the new law, wrote recently on Facebook. “I am not prepared to see the streets of Israel fill with hundreds of terrorists who have gone on a hunger strike and were released.”

Ma’an, the Palestinian news agency, reported Tuesday that 250 prisoners held in administrative detention had started a hunger strike.

Mr. Allan, who has been held since November, rejected an Israeli offer for release on the condition he leave the region for four years, and he told his lawyers that if he is not let go after Wednesday’s court hearing, he will no longer take even water.

“He is willing to bang his head against a wall,” said Sawsan Zaher of Adalah, an Arab-rights group pressing Mr. Allan’s appeal, predicting that if a compromise is not reached, “in a few hours, tomorrow, maximum tomorrow night, he will be dead.”

If that happens, “the West Bank and Gaza will explode, and it will be like a shackle on Israel’s neck,” Ms. Zaher added. “It’s now at a crossroads: How do you deal with administrative detention?”

Israeli leaders have long been loath to address that underlying issue. Instead they made individual deals, like the one in which Hana Shalabi, the only female prisoner to conduct a long-term hunger strike, was deported to Gaza in 2012, or another deal that same year that ended a mass protest with the promise of improved prison conditions.

“Before this law existed, there was an ad hoc situation — all the hunger strikes ended without anyone being force-fed or dying, which is the optimal solution,” said Michael L. Gross, head of the political science department at the University of Haifa, who noted that “the hunger strikers are not asking for the world, they’re not asking for Israel to leave the West Bank.”

“What they’ve done, simply, is raise the stakes,” added Professor Gross, an expert on bioethics and armed conflict. “Hunger striking, on the spectrum of what’s available to the Palestinians — from terrorism to nonviolent resistance — you’d think you’d prefer nonviolent. The government, by closing that off, not only tries to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle, but it also seems to me they’re paving the way to more violent reactions.”

The new law requires a court order to initiate force-feeding after a doctor determines a prisoner’s life is at risk and the authorities have made significant effort to obtain consent. It calls for preserving a striker’s dignity and avoiding pain and suffering.

Medical experts said the popular public image of a feeding tube being forced into the mouth or nose of an emaciated prisoner is not accurate. In reality, a prisoner who has not eaten for weeks cannot even absorb food.

Some experts say the intravenous fluids Mr. Allan received without his consent after falling unconscious last Friday is a sort of force-feeding.

Yechiel Barilan, a medical ethicist at Tel Aviv University who testified in Parliament about the new law, said the entire episode has taken on the outrageous contours of a reality show, with all sides mainly trying to manipulate public opinion. The Israeli doctors who called force-feeding torture are “unacceptable,” he said, but “the policy makers have not studied the history and dynamic of hunger strikes” and exaggerate the security threat posed by releasing an emaciated Mr. Allan.

“If Osama bin Laden was on hunger strike, I’d say, O.K., don’t release him, even on his deathbed he could inspire terrorism But we are so intimidated by a person that we claim must be force-fed to save his life?” he said. “I find it a contradiction in terms.”

Jodi Rudoren reported from Jerusalem, and Diaa Hadid from Ramallah, West Bank.



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10) Ex-Officers in Georgia Charged in Death Linked to Taser
By

ATLANTA — Two former police officers in East Point, Ga., have been charged with felony murder in connection with the 2014 death of a man who was repeatedly shocked with Taser devices while he was handcuffed.

The indictment, returned on Monday by a county grand jury here, charged former Sgt. Marcus Eberhart and former Cpl. Howard J. Weems Jr. with seven counts each, including felony murder, aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter, for their alleged roles in the death of Gregory L. Towns Jr., 24.

The former officers, the indictment said, “did directly and materially contribute to the death” of Mr. Towns through their uses of Tasers, which the indictment said could lead to serious injury when “used against a person who is handcuffed behind his back and exhibiting symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath.”The criminal charges against the former officers, neither of whom still works for the East Point police, came about 16 months after the death of Mr. Towns, who had fled after the police sought to question him about a domestic dispute.

After a foot pursuit, according to a report Corporal Weems submitted, a restrained Mr. Towns told officers that he was tired, and he refused to move toward a police vehicle.

Corporal Weems and Sergeant Eberhart said they subsequently used their Tasers to try to compel Mr. Towns to comply with their orders. But Mr. Towns, the sergeant wrote, eventually became “quiet” and had only “a light pulse.” Soon after, a paramedic could not detect a pulse for Mr. Towns. Mr. Towns was black, as are the former officers.

In a report last year, a local medical examiner declared Mr. Towns’s death a homicide and said it had been caused by hypertensive cardiovascular disease that had been aggravated by “conducted electrical stimulation” and strenuous physical activity. Although Taser International, which makes the electrical weapons, has described the devices as safe and effective, critics have condemned them as responsible for hundreds of deaths nationwide.

A lawyer for Mr. Towns’s family said Tuesday that it welcomed the indictment.

“This was unbelievable what happened to him, and it looked like the grand jury agreed,” the lawyer, L. Christopher Stewart, said. He added that the indictment signaled again that police officers could be held accountable for their on-duty conduct.

A lawyer for Mr. Weems did not respond to a message, and Mr. Eberhart could not be reached on Tuesday. Last year, East Point, a city of about 35,000 people near Atlanta, settled a lawsuit related to Mr. Towns’s death.


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11) Louisiana: New Trials Can Proceed for Ex-Officers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/us/louisiana-new-trials-can-proceed-for-ex-officers.html?ref=us

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday upheld a decision giving five former New Orleans police officers a new trial in connection with deadly shootings of unarmed people amid the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Four of the men are charged in the shootings at the Danziger Bridge a week after the storm. A fifth ex-officer is charged in the cover-up, which fell apart as federal investigators bore down. Their 2011 convictions were thrown out by a federal judge who said anonymous online postings by prosecutors tainted the case. The appeals court agreed.

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12) Activists Confront Hillary Clinton
By Charles M. Blow

A newly released video from Good magazine, showing Hillary Clinton in a meeting being confronted by young activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, thrilled me to no end. It also depressed me just as much.

The activists called on Clinton to answer for her and her husband’s part in the rise of mass incarceration in this country, a phenomenon that disproportionately affects black and brown people.

Julius Jones, a Black Lives Matter activist from Boston, said to Clinton:

“I genuinely want to know: You, and your family, have been in no uncertain way partially responsible for this, more than most.”

He then asked:“Now, there may have been unintended consequences, but now that you understand the consequences, what in your heart has changed, that’s going to change the direction of this country? What in you, like not your platform, not, not what you’re supposed to say, like how do you actually feel, that’s different than you did before? Like, what were the mistakes and how can those mistakes that you’ve made be lessons for all of America, or a moment of reflection on how we treat black people in this country?”

(Good magazine pointed out: “Hillary Clinton lobbied lawmakers to back the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Bill Clinton signed the act into law in 1994. The largest crime bill in history, it provided $9.7 billion in prison funding. From 1992 to 2000, the amount of prisoners in the U.S. increased almost 60 percent.”)

Clinton pointed to her record on civil rights work, but she never apologized for, or even acknowledged, her and her husband’s role in giving America the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest incarceration rate.

To me, the diversion was stunning, and telling.Maggie Haberman noted in The New York Times that the exchange “showed Mrs. Clinton as even her admirers lament that she is seldom seen: spontaneous, impassioned and seemingly unconcerned about potential repercussions.”

Politically, that may be true. She was agile and evasive, for sure. She bobbed and weaved like Floyd Mayweather. But there was a moral issue, an accountability issue, that still hung rotting in the ring: What in her has changed, now that she has seen the devastation a policy she advocated has wrought?

(Last month, at the annual convention of the N.A.A.C.P., Bill Clinton did apologize, saying, “I signed a bill that made the problem worse.” He continued, “And I want to admit it.” His contrition makes Hillary’s nonapology all the more vexing.)

This is the part of the Black Lives Matter political protests that I love so much: The idea that you must test the fealty of your supposed friends in addition to battling the fury of your avowed foes.

The truth of America is that both liberals and conservatives alike have things for which they must answer, sins for which they must atone, when it comes to how the criminal justice system has been aimed at and unleashed upon black people in this country.

And it’s not just the Clintons who have things they must answer for on criminal justice and black people. As I have written about before, toward the end of his tenure, President George W. Bush drastically reduced funding for the Byrne Formula Grant Program, which had been established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to supercharge the war on drugs — a disastrous boondoggle that would come to be a war waged primarily against marijuana use by black men.

As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in 2011, “The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.’”

A group of senators, mostly Democrats, wrote a letter demanding that the funding be restored. Barack Obama ran on a promise to restore that funding, and once elected, he did just that. As I wrote in 2010:

“The 2009 stimulus package presented these Democrats with the opportunity, and they seized it. The legislation, designed by Democrats and signed by President Obama, included $2 billion for Byrne Grants to be awarded by the end of September 2010. That was nearly a 12-fold increase in financing. Whatever the merits of these programs, they are outweighed by the damage being done. Financing prevention is fine. Financing a race-based arrest epidemic is not.”

And these sins exist not only at the federal level, but also at the local level.Many of the recent cases have been in some of our most liberal cities — cities that, as Isabel Wilkerson brilliantly pointed out in January, were the very ones to which black Americans flocked during the Great Migration.

Eric Garner was choked and killed by police in New York. Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police in Cleveland. Charley Saturmin Robinet was shot and killed by police in Los Angeles.

In a way, these deadly interactions are connected to civic policies that not only implicate the police officers but the liberals who occupy these cities themselves. Stop-and-frisk existed, in obscene proportions, in New York. And yet, most white voters in the city said that they approved of the program, according to a 2012 Quinnipiac University poll.

People from both sides of the aisle have cast poor black people to the wolves and averted their gaze from the ensuing carnage. But in a way, asking liberals to answer for their complicity is even more important than asking conservatives.

More than nine in 10 blacks vote Democratic. That level of fidelity should give black people some leverage, at the very least, to demand accountability

At one point in one of the videos, Clinton said:

“I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

But what if the same person saying that was partially responsible for changing the laws that allocated the resources that built up a system that operated as a tool of destruction?

These young activists, indeed all of us, should expect liberals to have more direct answers for their own actions — and inactions — than the one Clinton gave.

There can be no sacred cows when black people have been treated like sacrificial lambs.


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13) Cornel West: The Fire of a New Generation
By George Yancy and Cornel West
August 19, 2015
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/cornel-west-the-fire-of-a-new-generation/?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

This is the 15th in a series of interviews on race that I am conducting for The Stone. This week’s discussion is with Cornel West, one of the most prominent and provocative intellectuals in public life. He is a professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary and professor emeritus at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books, including “Black Prophetic Fire” and “The Radical King.” — George Yancy

George Yancy: Recently, on Aug. 10, you were arrested along with others outside the courthouse in St. Louis because of the collective resistance against continued racial injustice and police brutality. What was the political atmosphere like there?
Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall.
Cornel West: The black prophetic fire among the younger generation in Ferguson was intense and wonderful. Ferguson is ground zero for the struggle against police brutality and police murder. I just wanted to be a small part of that collective fight back that puts one’s body on the line. It was beautiful because part of the crowd was chanting, “This is what democracy looks like,” which echoes W.E.B. DuBois and the older generation’s critique of capitalist civilization and imperialist power. And you also had people chanting, “We gon’ be alright,” which is from rap artist Kendrick Lamar, who is concerned with the black body, decrepit schools, indecent housing. This chant is in many ways emerging as a kind of anthem of the movement for the younger generation. So, we had both the old school and the new school and I try to be a kind of link between these two schools. There was a polyphonic, antiphonal, call and response, all the way down and all the way live.

G.Y.: One of your newest books is entitled “Black Prophetic Fire.” Define what you mean by “black prophetic fire.”

C.W.: Black prophetic fire is the hypersensitivity to the suffering of others that generates a righteous indignation that results in the willingness to live and die for freedom.

I think in many ways we have to begin with the younger generation, the generation of Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island and Oakland. There is not just a rekindling, but a re-invigoration taking place among the younger generation that enacts and enables prophetic fire. We’ve been in an ice age. If you go from the 1960s and 1970s — that’s my generation. But there was also an ice age called the neoliberal epoch, an ice age where it was no longer a beautiful thing to be on fire. It was a beautiful thing to have money. It was a beautiful thing to have status. It was a beautiful thing to have public reputation without a whole lot of commitment to social justice, whereas the younger generation is now catching the fire of the generation of the 1960s and 1970s.

G.Y.: When I think of black prophetic fire, I think of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin L. King, James Baldwin and so many more. In recent weeks, some have favorably compared the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates to Baldwin. I know that you publicly criticized this comparison. What was the nature of your critique?

C.W.: In a phone conversation I had with Brother Coates not long ago, I told him that the black prophetic tradition is the collective fightback of sustained compassion in the face of sustained catastrophe. It has the highest standards of excellence, and we all fall short. So a passionate defense of Baldwin — or John Coltrane or Toni Morrison — is crucial in this age of Ferguson.


G.Y.: In what ways do you think the concept of black prophetic fire speaks to — or ought to speak to — events like the tragic murder of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.?
I’m an old Coltrane disciple just like I’m a Christian. You can be full of fire, but that fire has to be lit by a deep love of the people.
C.W.: Charleston is part and parcel of the ugly manifestation of the vicious legacy of white supremacy, and the younger generation — who have been wrestling with arbitrary police power, arbitrary corporate power, gentrification, the land-grabbing, the power-grabbing in and of the black community, and arbitrary cultural power in terms of white supremacist stereotypes promoted on television, radio and so forth — has become what I call the “marvelous new militancy,” and they embody this prophetic fire. The beautiful thing is that this “marvelous new militancy” is true for vanilla brothers and sisters, it’s true for all colors in the younger generation, though it is disproportionately black, disproportionately women and, significantly, disproportionately black, queer women.

G.Y.: Why the metaphor of “fire”?

C.W.: That’s just my tradition, brother. Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall. So, you straighten your back up, you take your stand, you speak your truth, you bear your witness and, most important, you are willing to live and die. Fire is very much about fruits as opposed to foliage. The ice age was all about foliage: “Look at me, look at me.” It was the peacock syndrome. Fire is about fruits, which is biblical, but also Marxist. It’s about praxis and what kind of life you live, what kind of costs you’re willing to bear, what kind of price you’re willing to pay, what kind of death you’re willing to embrace.

That was a great insight that Marcus Garvey had. Remember, Garvey often began his rallies with a black man or woman carrying a sign that read, “The Negro is not afraid.” Once you break the back of fear, you’re on fire. You need that fire. Even if that Negro carrying that sign is still shaking, the way that the lyrical genius Kanye West was shaking when he talked about George W. Bush not caring about black people, you’re still trying to overcome that fear, work through that fear.

The problem is that during the neoliberal epoch and during the ice age you’ve got the process of “niggerization,” which is designed to keep black people afraid. Keep them scared. Keep them intimidated. Keep them bowing and scraping. And Malcolm X understood this better than anybody, other than Ida B. Wells — they represented two of the highest moments of black prophetic fire in the 20th century. Ida, with a bounty on her head, was still full of fire. And Malcolm, we don’t even have a language for his fire.

G.Y.: Does this process of “niggerization” in American culture partly involve white supremacist myths being internalized by black people?

C.W.: Yes. When you teach black people that they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, and as a result you defer to the white supremacist status quo, you rationalize your accommodation to the status quo, you lose your fire, you become much more tied to producing foliage, what appears to be the case. And, of course, in late capitalist culture, the culture of superficial spectacle, driven by capital, driven by money, driven by the market, it’s all about image and interest, anyway. In other words, principle drops out. Any conception of being a person of integrity is laughed at because what is central is image, what is central is interest. And, of course, interest is tied to money, and image is tied to the peacock projection, of what you appear to be.
When you teach black people they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, you defer to the white supremacist status quo.
G.Y.: Can we assume then that you then would emphasize a form of education that would critique a certain kind of hyperrealism that is obsessed with images and nonmarket values?

C.W.: That’s right; absolutely. It’s the kind of thing that my dear brother Henry Giroux talks about with such insight. He’s written many books providing such a powerful critique of neoliberal market models of education. Stanley Aronowitz, of course, goes right along with Giroux’s critique in that regard. The notion has to do precisely with that critical consciousness that the great Paulo Freire talks about, or the great Myles Horton talked about, or the great bell hooks talks about in her works. How do you generate that kind of courageous critical consciousness that cuts against the grain and that discloses the operations of market interests and images, capitalist forms of wealth inequality, massive surveillance, imperial policies, drones dropping bombs on innocent people, ecological catastrophe and escalating nuclear catastrophe?

All of these various issues are very much tied into a kind of market model of education that reinforces the capitalist civilization, one that is more and more obsessed with just interest and image.

G.Y.: What do you see as the foremost challenge in creating a common cause between past generation and the current generation now “catching fire,” as you put it?

C.W.: For me, it is the dialectical interplay between the old school and prophetic thought and action. I’m an old Coltrane disciple just like I’m a Christian. You can be full of fire, but that fire has to be lit by a deep love of the people. And if that love is not in it, then the fire actually becomes just a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal that doesn’t get at the real moral substance and spiritual content that keeps anybody going, but especially people who have been hated for so long and in so many ways, as black people have.

For me, the love ethic is at the very center of it. It can be the love ethic of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Marvin Gaye, John Coltrane or Curtis Mayfield, but it has to have that central focus on loving the people. And when you love people, you hate the fact that they’re being treated unfairly. You tell the truth. You sacrifice your popularity for integrity. There is a willingness to give your life back to the people given that, in the end, they basically gave it to you, because we are who we are because somebody loved us anyway.

G.Y.: This idea relates to the collection of Dr. King’s writings you edited, called “The Radical King.” Why did you undertake the job of curating and editing the book?

C.W.: Because Martin had been so sanitized and sterilized. He has been so Santa Claus-ified, turned into an old man with a smile, toys in his bag to give out, and leaving everybody feeling so good. It was like we were living in Disneyland rather than in the nightmare that the present-day America is for so many poor working people, especially poor black working people. So, we needed a kind of crystallization. 

But there has been a variety of different voices talking about the radical King. You know my closest friend in the world, James Melvin Washington, was the only person that the King family allowed to bring the collection of sermons and writings together. It’s one of the greatest honors for me to be the second person that the King family allowed to bring those kinds of writings together across the board, laying out a framework. You’ve got James Melvin Washington’s “A Testament of Hope.” You’ve got other wonderful scholars like James Cone, Lewis Baldwin and others who have done magnificent work in their own way. But, you know, as I pass off the stage of space and time, I want to be able to leave these love letters to the younger generation. I want to tell them that they’re part of a great tradition, a grand tradition of struggle, critical, intellectual struggle, of moral and political struggle, and a spiritual struggle in music and the arts, and so on.

Contrary to when people talk about King every January, there is in “The Radical King” in fact a particular understanding of this moral titan, spiritual giant and great crusader for justice. So you get a sense of who he really was beyond all of the sanitizing and sterilizing that are trotted out every year in celebration of him. I consider it the most important book I’ve ever done.

G.Y.: King is well known for quoting the American reformer and abolitionist Theodore Parker’s words, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” What’s your assessment of King’s claim now, in 2015, particularly in the light of the kind of existential plight and angst that black people and poor people are experiencing? Is there an arc of the moral universe?

C.W.: I think King had a very thick metaphysics when it came to history being the canvas upon which God was in full control. As you know, I don’t have such a thick metaphysics. I am closer to Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett and a bluesman. I think that King at the end of his life became more of a bluesman. He began to think: “Lord, have mercy. That arc might be bending, but it sure is bending the wrong way.” After all, he’s dealing with white supremacist backlash, patriarchal backlash and capitalist backlash against working people and the possibility of ecological catastrophe. He was already wrestling with the possible non-existence of life on the earth in terms of the nuclear catastrophe that we were on the brink of. So, he made a leap of faith grounded in a certain conception of history that was heading toward justice. I don’t accept that. I just do it because it’s right. I do it because integrity, honesty and decency are in and of themselves enough reward that I’d rather go under, trying to do what’s right, even if it has no chance at all.

G.Y.: I was thinking about your existentialist sensibilities that would in fact be critical of the claim that the universe is moral at all. Yet, both you and King share a blues sensibility that places emphasis on touching the pain and yet transcending the pain, and also the importance of the Christian good news.

C.W.: Oh, absolutely, we are both very similar in terms of never allowing hatred to have the last word, not allowing despair to have the last word, telling the truth about structures of domination of various sorts, keeping track of the variety of forms of oppression so we don’t become ghettoized and tied to just one single issue. Yet, at the same time, we’re trying to sustain hope by being a hope. Hope is not simply something that you have; hope is something that you are. So, when Curtis Mayfield says “keep on pushing,” that’s not an abstract conception about optimism in the world. That is an imperative to be a hope for others in the way Christians in the past used to be a blessing — not the idea of praying for a blessings, but being a blessing.

John Coltrane says be a force for good. Don’t just talk about forces for good, be a force. So it’s an ontological state. So, in the end, all we have is who we are. If you end up being cowardly, then you end up losing the best of your world, or your society, or your community, or yourself. If you’re courageous, you protect, try and preserve the best of it. Now, you might preserve the best, and still not be good enough to triumph over evil. Hey, that’s the way it is. You did the best you could do. T.S. Eliot says, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” T.S. Eliot was a right-wing brother who was full of wisdom. All you can do is to try; keep on pushing. That’s all you can do.

G.Y.: When it comes to race in America in 2015, what is to be done?

C.W.: Well, the first thing, of course, is you’ve got to shatter denial, avoidance and evasion. That’s part of my criticism of the president. For seven years, he just hasn’t or refused to hit it head-on. It looks like he’s now beginning to find his voice. But in finding his voice, it’s either too late or he’s lost his moral authority. He can’t drop drones on hundreds of innocent children and then talk about how upset he is when innocent people are killed. You can’t reshape the world in the image of corporate interest and image with Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and then say that you’re in deep solidarity with working people and poor people. You can’t engage in massive surveillance, keeping track of phone calls across the board, targeting Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and others, and then turn right back around and say you’re against secrecy, you’re against clandestine policy.

So that, unfortunately, if he had come right in and asserted his moral authority over against Fox News, over against right-wing, conservative folk who were coming at him — even if he lost — he would have let the world know what his deep moral convictions are. But he came in as a Machiavellian. He came in with political calculation. That’s why he brought in Machiavellians like Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers, and others. So, it was clear it was going to be political calculation, not moral conviction.

How can anyone take your word seriously after seven years about how we need to put a spotlight on racism when, for seven years, you’ve been engaged in political calculation about racism? But then you send out your lieutenants. You send out all your Obama cheerleaders and bootlickers and they say to his critics that he is president of all of America, not black America. And we say white supremacy is a matter of truth. Are you interested in truth? It’s a matter of justice. Are you interested in justice? It’s a matter of national security. Are you interested in national security? Well, we talk about black America. We’re not talking about some ghettoized group that’s just an interest group that you have to engage in political calculation about. When you talk about black people, you’re talking about wrestling with lies and injustice coming at them and their quest for truth and justice. If you’re not interested in truth and justice, no politician ought to be in office, and not just the president. So, we’ve actually had a major setback in seven years; a lost opportunity.

G.Y.: But is it really possible to speak courageous speech while acting as the most powerful country in the world? Of course, we also have to admit the history of racism preceded Obama’s tenure and will exceed it. My point is that there is a deep tension that exists for someone who desires to embody prophetic fire and yet be in charge of an empire.

C.W.: I think that’s true for most politicians, actually. Now when it comes to the intellectuals who rationalize their deference to the politician, so they want to pose as prophetic even though they are very much deferential to the powers that be, they need to be criticized in a very intense way. That’s why I’m very hard on the Obama cheerleaders, you see, but when it comes to the politicians themselves, it is very difficult to be a prophetic politician the way in which Harold Washington was or the way Paul Wellstone was or the way Shirley Chisholm was, or the way my dear brother Bernie Sanders actually is. He is a prophetic politician. He speaks the truth about wealth and equality. He speaks the truth about Wall Street. He speaks the truth about working and poor people being afterthoughts in terms of the kind of calculations of the oligarchs of our day. He shows that it’s possible to be a politician who speaks the truth.

Once you occupy the White House, you are head of the empire. Then you have a choice. We’ve had two grand candidates in the history of the United States. We’ve had Abraham Lincoln and we’ve had Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both of them are full of flaws, full of faults, full of many, many blind spots. But they pushed the American experiment in a progressive way, even given their faults. And that’s what we thought Obama was going to do. We were looking for Lincoln, and we got another Clinton, and that is in no way satisfying.

That’s what I mean by, we were looking for a Coltrane and we ended up getting a Kenny G. You can’t help but be profoundly disappointed. But also ready for more fightback in post-Obama America!

This interview was conducted by email and edited. Previous interviews in this series (with Linda Martin Alcoff, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Charles Mills, Falguni A. Sheth and others) can be found here.

George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at Emory University. He has written, edited and co-edited numerous books, including “Black Bodies, White Gazes,” “Look, a White!” and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” co-edited with Janine Jones. 
 
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14) Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Call New Elections, Officials Say
By NIKI KITSANTONIS and

ATHENS — Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece will call for national elections on Sept. 20 in a bid to consolidate his power and press ahead with the bailout plan he agreed to this summer with European creditors, government officials said Thursday.

Mr. Tsipras is expected to begin the process by submitting his resignation on Thursday, clearing the way for a vote next month on whether he and his leftist Syriza party should be returned to power with a new mandate.

“We know for sure that we will have elections on the 20th,” said one government minister, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity. “He is going to resign today.”

Mr. Tsipras has been weighing new elections for weeks amid a deep split within his party over his embrace of the bailout plan.Mr. Tsipras was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform but, after several tumultuous months, he reversed course and agreed to a new bailout program with the country’s European creditors. The deal infuriated Syriza’s far-left factions, and it was passed through Parliament with the help of opposition parties. Defections from Mr. Tsipras’s coalition had raised the possibility that he would not have the necessary support to prevail in a potential parliamentary test of confidence in his leadership, a possibility he short-circuited by calling for new elections.


Some analysts had thought Mr. Tsipras might not call snap elections until October, after the country faces the first review of its progress in meeting the terms of the bailout, but instead he moved to act more quickly.

The move to quick elections could slow or complicate progress in carrying out the initial phases of the changes demanded by the bailout package. But Mr. Tsipras has remained highly popular in Greece despite his reversal on the bailout plan, with polls showing no other leader in a position to challenge him at this stage.

In comments in Parliament on Thursday, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said early elections would not lead to political instability and called on Greeks to return their savings to banks.

“Now there is an agreement, there is a course ahead,” he said, referring to the latest bailout, which formally took effect on Thursday following approval on Wednesday by the German Parliament and European officials in Brussels.

Energy Minister Panos Skourletis said on state TV earlier in the day that elections were needed to deal with the split in Syriza. “The political landscape must be cleared up. We need to know whether the government has or doesn’t have a majority.”

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Jim Yardley from Rome.



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15) Palestinian Ends Fast After Israel Suspended His Detention
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian prisoner held without charge in Israel ended his two-month-long hunger strike on Thursday, his lawyer said, a day after Israel's Supreme Court suspended his detention.

The case of Mohammed Allan's 66-day strike tested a new Israeli law allowing force-feeding, which has been criticized by many doctors who say the practice amounts to torture. It also cast light on Israel's use of administrative detention, the holding of suspects for long periods without charge or trial.

Allan's lawyer Jamil Khatib told reporters that his client ended his strike on Thursday and that his condition remained still serious but stable. It could take several weeks to know the full extent of the damage Allan sustained as a result of the prolonged fast, Khatib cautioned.

On Wednesday, Israel's Supreme court suspended the detention order against Allan, releasing him while he receives medical care.Earlier Thursday, Dr. Hezy Levy of Israel's Barzilai hospital, where Allan slipped into unconsciousness last Friday, said the 31-year-old Palestinian was showing "great improvement."

Allan regained consciousness on Monday and is said to have suffered brain damage as a result of his strike.

"We took him off the respirator. He's no longer sedated," Levy said. "He is starting to communicate and I am happy that medically he is on the right path."

Levy said he hoped that Allan would soon start eating again on his own. Allan's body cannot yet process food after such a prolonged fast.

Allan began his fast to protest the Israel's policy of administrative detention, which allows authorities to hold suspects for months without charge or trial.

Israel defends the practice as a necessary tool to stop militant attacks and argues that revealing the charges would expose intelligence networks and put lives in danger. Rights groups say the measure violates due process, is meant only for extraordinary cases, and is overused.

Israel said the detention was applied to Allan for his affiliation with Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group that has carried out scores of attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. Allan denies the affiliation.

Wednesday's court decision means Allan will no longer be shackled to his bed and his family will be able to visit him in the hospital.



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16) Britain and France to Announce Measures to Contain Migrant Crisis in Calais
By

LONDON — After a summer in Britain and France dominated by news of migrants trying to break into the Channel Tunnel, the two countries will announce new security measures on Thursday intended to contain a crisis that has disrupted travel and stirred a fierce debate about migration.

Several thousand migrants remain in a makeshift camp at Calais, France, with many making nightly efforts to break into the Channel Tunnel and stow away on cars, trucks and trains. One migrant even walked most of the 31-mile tunnel, where he avoided being hit by trains but was arrested as he approached Folkestone in Britain.

Under plans set to be formally announced later in the day, British police and border protection forces will work with their French counterparts at a new “command and control center” in Calais. The new body will be led by two senior officers, one English and one French, and will try to target those organizing human trafficking, the British government said.The deal will be signed by the British home secretary, Theresa May, who traveled to Calais, and the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve.

“In order to secure the inhabitants of Calais but also to control the borders,” Mr. Cazeneuve said after arriving in Calais, “1,300 French policemen are mobilized, and 500 more, just behind me, are here to boost security of the borders.”Britain is also promising more spending to reinforce the perimeter of the Eurotunnel railhead with tougher fencing, CCTV, flood lighting and infrared detection technology.

Extra search teams, including detection dogs, will be deployed, more mobile French policing units will be added and a security audit will be conducted, according to the British Home Office.

The problems at Calais have disrupted truck drivers and travelers, but they are only a small part of the migration crisis sweeping Europe. In July alone, the number of migrants detected at the borders of the 28-nation European Union rose to 107,500, more than three times the number in the same month last year, according to Frontex, the bloc’s border management agency.

“I believe that in front of this international and very serious issue, which leads to an increase of the migratory flow pressure all around Europe, we must understand here in Calais that the issue goes beyond Calais and even beyond the frame of our bilateral cooperation,” Mr. Cazeneuve said. “It’s an issue that leads us to also work closely with the authorities of the countries from those people come from.”

Although the number of attempts to storm the Channel appears to have fallen recently — Mr. Cazeneuve said the figures were now one-tenth of what they were a few weeks ago — the images of chaos on the border between two of Europe’s richest nations have highlighted the inability of Europe to deal with the migratory crisis prompted by war and economic hardship in the Middle East and Africa.

Under reciprocal arrangements, British officials conduct passport checks on those crossing the Channel on French soil, before their journey, making them reliant on French cooperation. Although some British politicians have criticized France for failing to deal with the migrant problems at Calais, the government has been careful not to do so.

The scenes at Calais have stoked Britain’s debate about migration, however, and last month, Prime Minister David Cameron was criticized after he referred to the large number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean as a “swarm,” although he later said he had not been trying to dehumanize people trying to reach Europe.

Policy makers in Europe face a big collective challenge in dealing with the crisis, and efforts to agree on quotas for European Union countries to accept refugees have achieved only limited success.

“This is an absolute human tragedy, with people who are dying and people who are in terrible situations,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Thursday, according to Reuters.



Lilia Blaise contributed reporting from Paris.




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17) Mexican Worker in Trump Hotel Criticizes Donald Trump’s Views, on Video
By

Ricardo Aca knew he could be fired. But he wanted the camera to roll anyway.

Mr. Aca is shown holding his cellphone watching Donald J. Trump call Mexicans who enter the United States rapists, criminals and drug dealers. Then, Mr. Aca calmly tells his story.

A slight 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who graduated from high school and community college in Queens, Mr. Aca works at the Koi SoHo restaurant, which leases space inside the Trump SoHo hotel. He made a short video with a filmmaker friend and posted it on Facebook on Monday, where it attracted more than 300,000 views in 24 hours.

“I was offended because this is not who we are, this is not who I am, this is not anybody I know who is an immigrant,” Mr. Aca said in an interview on Tuesday, wearing his Mexican national team soccer jersey.

Amid the uproar over immigration in the presidential race — marked by Mr. Trump’s inflammatory comments about Mexicans and his plan to build a wall along the border and deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country — the video ignited another debate over what it means to be legal in the United States.

“I know I could lose my job for just talking about Trump,” Mr. Aca says in the video, “but it doesn’t make me proud every day to go to work under his name.”

He described himself as an undocumented immigrant who came here at age 14. But in the video he did not say that he has documents that enable him to remain in the country legally. He was part of a wave of immigrants who came to the United States as children who have been granted deportation deferrals and work permits under a 2012 program.

With this legal permit, Mr. Aca has worked as a busboy for two years for the restaurant, which is not owned or operated by the Trump Organization.

In a brief interview in response to Mr. Aca’s video, Mr. Trump, whose immigration stance has helped vault him to the lead among Republican candidates, said: “He’s got a legal work permit. I’ve heard he does a good job. We thought he was an illegal immigrant at first.”

But while Mr. Trump was quick to point out that his companies employ only people with legal work papers, his immigration policy is far less flexible in its definition of legal status. In announcing his immigration plan in a blueprint and in various interviews, he said he opposed the plan that allowed Mr. Aca to stay in the country and work.

For now, Mr. Trump said he would not press Mr. Aca’s employer to punish him, though he added, “I want to check his file.”

Mr. Aca came to New York from Puebla, Mexico, with his 12-year-old sister. His mother had sought legal avenues for the family to enter the United States, applying for visas, he said, but was unsuccessful. She wound up in New York, getting a job sewing in a factory, and in 2005 arranged for her children to cross the border in Arizona.

As a teenager in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Mr. Aca steadily learned English from listening to Britney Spears songs. He graduated from Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood, Queens, and received an associate’s degree in photography at LaGuardia Community College.

He works as an assistant in the photography lab there and splits his time working at a Williamsburg sushi restaurant, Cherry Izakaya, as a runner, and at Koi SoHo. In the video, he said he wanted his three jobs to dispel stereotypes that Mexicans are lazy.

Asked why he defined himself as undocumented in the video, Mr. Aca explained his legal uncertainty.

“I’m in the deferred action program, which I have to renew every two years,” he said. “I consider myself an undocumented immigrant still because it could just be taken away from me at any time.”

On Tuesday, the Koi restaurant group demanded that the filmmaker, Chase Whiteside, take down the video, claiming that Mr. Aca had made false and defamatory statements. The video, titled “Meet Ricardo, an undocumented immigrant who works in a Trump Hotel,” was misleading, said Suzanne Chou, a lawyer for Koi Group, because it implied Mr. Aca was working illegally — for a Trump hotel. Koi SoHo, she said, is a “third-party tenant” in the hotel.

“Our company follows the law, and if you are eligible to work at Koi, you can apply,” Ms. Chou said.

But David W. Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, volunteered on Mr. Whiteside’s behalf to write a letter to the restaurant group in response. He argued that while Mr. Aca was authorized to work, he was still undocumented. He cited information on the website of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services stating that “deferred action does not confer lawful status upon an individual.”

On Monday, shortly after the video was posted, the Koi payroll department called Mr. Aca to bring the renewal of his work permit that he said he had forgotten to submit in December. When he walked into the kitchen, he said that line cooks from Mexico and sushi chefs from Japan told him they were proud of him.

“It’s important to stand up for what I believe in and to be able to defend myself,” Mr. Aca said. “If I do work at Trump SoHo, I have the platform to send this message.”



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