A #NoDAPL Map
By Carl Sack
Cartographer, Graduate Student
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-nodapl-map_us_581a0623e4b014443087af35
When I decided to become a cartographer, I didn’t just want to make pretty and useful maps. I became a cartographer to make maps that change the world for the better. Right now, no situation needs this kind of map more than the current drama unfolding around the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline’s crossing of the Missouri River.
Thousands of Native Americans and their allies have gathered on unceded Sioux land delimited by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie to try and stand in the way of the “black snake” that could poison the Standing Rock Reservation’s water supply. Many have noted that the pipeline corridor was repositioned from its original route north of Bismarck after white citizens spoke up against the threat a spill would pose to their drinking water ― a threat duly recognized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Yet the Corps failed its federal mandate for meaningful consultationwith the Standing Rock Tribe before signing off on a route that moved the pipeline to their doorstep.
This is not to say that the good citizens of Bismarck and Mandan were wrong to protest. What’s wrong with the picture above isn’t the routing of the pipeline. What’s wrong is that the pipeline project exists to begin with. Some say it’s a good alternative to dangerous oil-by-rail shipments of Bakken crude. Those are bad too. We don’t need more fossil fuels making it to market to be burned and burn up the planet in turn (I am typing this in Wisconsin as the temperature nears 70 on the first of November). We do all need clean water. As the Sioux say, mni wiconi (”water is life”).
To keep to its construction schedule, the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, has met nonviolent water protectors with private security guards using attack dogs in a scene reminiscent of 1963 Birmingham. It has worked hand-in-glove with law enforcement and the National Guard to create a militarized response straight out of apartheid South Africa or occupied Ireland. It has locked up hundreds of protesters in wire cages like those used early on at Guantanamo Bay. Those on the ground fear something like another Kent State, yet they keep coming, and the worldwide solidarity has gone viral.
Yet for all that, when I went out to camp with the water protectors at Oceti Sakowin on October 13, I had to rely on a friend’s hand-drawn sketch posted to Facebook for directions to the camp. If you Google “NoDAPL map,” you’ll find few maps available to provide visual context for the unfolding drama. The most popular seems to be the company’s own very-small-scale route map, showing a dotted line over highlighted counties on a generic road map backdrop.
This kind of view erases the people affected by the pipeline – quite literally, by covering over their communities with a hot pink gradient fill. It doesn’t tell you that all of Turtle Island (North America) is Indian Country, or that the project runs headlong into international treaties signed between the U.S. and various tribes and then unilaterally violated by Congress. It doesn’t show you where the frontline communities have set up camp to fight back (and here I realize that I should also make a map of the Bold Iowa resistance camp), or where the pipeline company, spurred on by the internal pressure of their $3.8 billion investment, has bulldozed sacred ground, or where exactly a pipeline break would endanger the drinking water of millions downstream.
There was one other better map of the project that I found and was partially inspired by ― a relatively simple yet powerful map by Jordan Engle (with help from Dakota Wind) published by The Decolonial Atlas. It uses the indigenous placenames for key waterways and sites in the vicinity of the Sacred Stones Camp (translations are on the blog post linked to above). It is oriented to the south, challenging the typical viewpoint of Western maps. This map has truly not gotten the attention it deserves.
Maps like this are great, and there should be more of them. However, I felt strongly that there still needed to be a map of the area that would look familiar to most viewers and orient them to the important geographic facts of the struggle. I don’t claim that none of those facts are currently in dispute, but I recognize that all maps (even road maps overlaid with pink polygons) take a position and create knowledge based on the cartographer’s point of view. Maps have great power, and it’s a power anyone with pen and paper or a computer can wield.
My geographer hero Zoltan Grossman once declared, “The side with the best maps wins.” The pipeline company has an army backed by state power to do its bidding. The water has its scrappy protectors. It’s time we put the latter on the map.
The original blog post is available here. To download a large-scale printable version of the map, click here.
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By Carl Sack
Cartographer, Graduate Student
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-nodapl-map_us_581a0623e4b014443087af35
When I decided to become a cartographer, I didn’t just want to make pretty and useful maps. I became a cartographer to make maps that change the world for the better. Right now, no situation needs this kind of map more than the current drama unfolding around the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline’s crossing of the Missouri River.
Thousands of Native Americans and their allies have gathered on unceded Sioux land delimited by the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie to try and stand in the way of the “black snake” that could poison the Standing Rock Reservation’s water supply. Many have noted that the pipeline corridor was repositioned from its original route north of Bismarck after white citizens spoke up against the threat a spill would pose to their drinking water ― a threat duly recognized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Yet the Corps failed its federal mandate for meaningful consultationwith the Standing Rock Tribe before signing off on a route that moved the pipeline to their doorstep.
This is not to say that the good citizens of Bismarck and Mandan were wrong to protest. What’s wrong with the picture above isn’t the routing of the pipeline. What’s wrong is that the pipeline project exists to begin with. Some say it’s a good alternative to dangerous oil-by-rail shipments of Bakken crude. Those are bad too. We don’t need more fossil fuels making it to market to be burned and burn up the planet in turn (I am typing this in Wisconsin as the temperature nears 70 on the first of November). We do all need clean water. As the Sioux say, mni wiconi (”water is life”).
To keep to its construction schedule, the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, has met nonviolent water protectors with private security guards using attack dogs in a scene reminiscent of 1963 Birmingham. It has worked hand-in-glove with law enforcement and the National Guard to create a militarized response straight out of apartheid South Africa or occupied Ireland. It has locked up hundreds of protesters in wire cages like those used early on at Guantanamo Bay. Those on the ground fear something like another Kent State, yet they keep coming, and the worldwide solidarity has gone viral.
Yet for all that, when I went out to camp with the water protectors at Oceti Sakowin on October 13, I had to rely on a friend’s hand-drawn sketch posted to Facebook for directions to the camp. If you Google “NoDAPL map,” you’ll find few maps available to provide visual context for the unfolding drama. The most popular seems to be the company’s own very-small-scale route map, showing a dotted line over highlighted counties on a generic road map backdrop.
This kind of view erases the people affected by the pipeline – quite literally, by covering over their communities with a hot pink gradient fill. It doesn’t tell you that all of Turtle Island (North America) is Indian Country, or that the project runs headlong into international treaties signed between the U.S. and various tribes and then unilaterally violated by Congress. It doesn’t show you where the frontline communities have set up camp to fight back (and here I realize that I should also make a map of the Bold Iowa resistance camp), or where the pipeline company, spurred on by the internal pressure of their $3.8 billion investment, has bulldozed sacred ground, or where exactly a pipeline break would endanger the drinking water of millions downstream.
There was one other better map of the project that I found and was partially inspired by ― a relatively simple yet powerful map by Jordan Engle (with help from Dakota Wind) published by The Decolonial Atlas. It uses the indigenous placenames for key waterways and sites in the vicinity of the Sacred Stones Camp (translations are on the blog post linked to above). It is oriented to the south, challenging the typical viewpoint of Western maps. This map has truly not gotten the attention it deserves.
Maps like this are great, and there should be more of them. However, I felt strongly that there still needed to be a map of the area that would look familiar to most viewers and orient them to the important geographic facts of the struggle. I don’t claim that none of those facts are currently in dispute, but I recognize that all maps (even road maps overlaid with pink polygons) take a position and create knowledge based on the cartographer’s point of view. Maps have great power, and it’s a power anyone with pen and paper or a computer can wield.
My geographer hero Zoltan Grossman once declared, “The side with the best maps wins.” The pipeline company has an army backed by state power to do its bidding. The water has its scrappy protectors. It’s time we put the latter on the map.
The original blog post is available here. To download a large-scale printable version of the map, click here.
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Please sign this petition urging prison administrations to lift the ban on the SF Bay View newspaper. Help us to expose the unjust censorship of prisoners speaking out against injustice.
Prison administrations in several states have banned prisoners from receiving the SF Bay View National Black Newspaper.The SF Bay View is a grassroots paper that has published articles by and about prisoners for decades, giving them the opportunity to discuss the many injustices they experience.
The bans began in July 2016 in an attempt to silence those preparing for the nationwide prison strike that began on September 9. On that day, thousands of prisoners stopped working in protest of a host of prison injustices, including toxic work conditions, overcrowdedness and extreme deadly heat, and to demand that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution be amended. The 13th Amendment, which purportedly abolished slavery, includes this escape-clause: "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
Add your name.
Since the strike began, dozens of prisoners have reportedly been placed in solitary confinement and/or transferred to other distant facilities. At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan, guards have forced prisoners to work by attacking them with weapons and tear gas. In Texas prisons, there has been a spate of suicides.
Articles sent from prisons to the SF Bay View reporting these conditions have been continuously intercepted.
Denying access to the SF Bay View violates prisoners' rights to information, education, and communication with their broader communities. It's a violation of freedom of speech and press.
Sign the petition by clicking here.
After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.
This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.
-- The RootsAction.org Team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.
Background:
* Un-Ban the Bay View!
* 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
* Voice of Detroit: Prisoners Teargassed, Zip-Tied, Left Out in Rain
Please sign this petition urging prison administrations to lift the ban on the SF Bay View newspaper. Help us to expose the unjust censorship of prisoners speaking out against injustice.
Prison administrations in several states have banned prisoners from receiving the SF Bay View National Black Newspaper.The SF Bay View is a grassroots paper that has published articles by and about prisoners for decades, giving them the opportunity to discuss the many injustices they experience.
The bans began in July 2016 in an attempt to silence those preparing for the nationwide prison strike that began on September 9. On that day, thousands of prisoners stopped working in protest of a host of prison injustices, including toxic work conditions, overcrowdedness and extreme deadly heat, and to demand that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution be amended. The 13th Amendment, which purportedly abolished slavery, includes this escape-clause: "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
Add your name.
Since the strike began, dozens of prisoners have reportedly been placed in solitary confinement and/or transferred to other distant facilities. At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan, guards have forced prisoners to work by attacking them with weapons and tear gas. In Texas prisons, there has been a spate of suicides.
Articles sent from prisons to the SF Bay View reporting these conditions have been continuously intercepted.
Denying access to the SF Bay View violates prisoners' rights to information, education, and communication with their broader communities. It's a violation of freedom of speech and press.
Sign the petition by clicking here.
After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.
This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.
-- The RootsAction.org Team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.
Background:
* Un-Ban the Bay View!
* 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
* Voice of Detroit: Prisoners Teargassed, Zip-Tied, Left Out in Rain
Prison administrations in several states have banned prisoners from receiving the SF Bay View National Black Newspaper.The SF Bay View is a grassroots paper that has published articles by and about prisoners for decades, giving them the opportunity to discuss the many injustices they experience.
The bans began in July 2016 in an attempt to silence those preparing for the nationwide prison strike that began on September 9. On that day, thousands of prisoners stopped working in protest of a host of prison injustices, including toxic work conditions, overcrowdedness and extreme deadly heat, and to demand that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution be amended. The 13th Amendment, which purportedly abolished slavery, includes this escape-clause: "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
Add your name.
Since the strike began, dozens of prisoners have reportedly been placed in solitary confinement and/or transferred to other distant facilities. At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan, guards have forced prisoners to work by attacking them with weapons and tear gas. In Texas prisons, there has been a spate of suicides.
Articles sent from prisons to the SF Bay View reporting these conditions have been continuously intercepted.
Denying access to the SF Bay View violates prisoners' rights to information, education, and communication with their broader communities. It's a violation of freedom of speech and press.
Sign the petition by clicking here.
After signing the petition, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.
This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.
-- The RootsAction.org Team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.
Background:
* Un-Ban the Bay View!
* 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
* Voice of Detroit: Prisoners Teargassed, Zip-Tied, Left Out in Rain
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Black Children Punished for Anthem Protests
After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.
For these young Black kids, the plight of injustice in America is their own. Instead of supporting the boys and their protests, their executive board and league officials abandoned them. The board has decided to strip these kids of the team that they love to punish them for asking for basic rights and dignities. This is about the board reinforcing that police violence in our communities doesn’t matter, that our issues aren’t important and that speaking onthem makes you subject to punishment.
These kids are brave for refusing to give in to the executive board and for standing against injustice. We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
To the Beaumont Bulls Executive Board,
Immediately reinstate the Beaumont Bulls coaching staff, apologize to the boys and their parents, and allow them to finish their season.
Sincerely,
We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/black-children-punished-anthem-protests/?sp_ref=239333099.176.176140.e.558213.2&referring_akid=6495.1114646.XlU2ME&source=em_sp
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After young 11 and 12-year-boys of the Beaumont Bulls football knelt during the anthem to protest police violence against Black youth, their local executive board canceled their entire football season, suspended the coaching staff, and threatened to arrest their parents if they attended any future games, practices or events.
For these young Black kids, the plight of injustice in America is their own. Instead of supporting the boys and their protests, their executive board and league officials abandoned them. The board has decided to strip these kids of the team that they love to punish them for asking for basic rights and dignities. This is about the board reinforcing that police violence in our communities doesn’t matter, that our issues aren’t important and that speaking onthem makes you subject to punishment.
These kids are brave for refusing to give in to the executive board and for standing against injustice. We need to support the fight of these children and show them that their protest is heard.
To the Beaumont Bulls Executive Board,
Immediately reinstate the Beaumont Bulls coaching staff, apologize to the boys and their parents, and allow them to finish their season.
Sincerely,
http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/black-children-punished-anthem-protests/?sp_ref=239333099.176.176140.e.558213.2&referring_akid=6495.1114646.XlU2ME&source=em_sp
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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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Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Come on out for the Leonard Peltier Art Show on Sunday, November 13 from 12 PM – 4:30 PM @ The Saxon Pub, 1320 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX.
Please make a donation online and/or pledge to donate monthly or mail your donation to ILPDC, PO Box 24, Hillsboro, OR 97123
Click on Image for Details
Come on out for the Leonard Peltier Art Show on Sunday, November 13 from 12 PM – 4:30 PM @ The Saxon Pub, 1320 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX.
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Shout Out to Austin, TX
Come on out for the Leonard Peltier Art Show on Sunday, November 13 from 12 PM – 4:30 PM @ The Saxon Pub, 1320 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX.
Join us for art and music with all proceeds donated to the "Free Leonard Peltier Defense Fund!" Come see original artwork by Leonard Peltier and other art donated by local artists.
Featuring Music From:
Walt Wilkins
Johnny Nicholas
Scott H. Biram
and other guests.
SILENT AUCTION from 12:00 – 5:00 PM
Items include a "Texas Guitar" signed by Willie Nelson and much more.
Hosted By:
Connie Nelson
Karianne Boushee (Leonard's niece)
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SURJ compiled this extensive list of activities coming up to oppose DAPL.
I hope everyone has heard about the big demonstration early on Tuesday, November 15.
There are lots of other events. Read on and come out!
NEWSFLASH
Bay Area Chapter
NOVEMBER 3, 2016SURJ Bay Area has compiled this list of activities this month, Native Heritage Month, to support the #NoDAPL struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as local Indigenous struggles. Please participate & share! Here are 10 things you can do to support Standing Rock now.
Sunday, November 6 • 2:00 - 4:00 pm
West Berkeley Shellmound Interfaith Prayer
Host: Sogorea Te Land Trust
The Ohlone Sacred Site is in danger of being destroyed. Calling all friends and allies to come forward and put our hearts together with the intentions to save the oldest Ohlone site in the entire Bay. While we are gathered together we will also send our prayers to the warriors holding the front lines in ND at Sacred Stone Camp/Red Warrior Camp/and other camps.
Location: 1900 Fourth St. Berkeley More info
Learn more about the Sogorea Te Land Trust HERE and the Shuumi Land Tax HERE (a way to support Sogorea Te Land Trust’s work to acquire and preserve land, establish a cemetery to reinter stolen Ohlone ancestral remains and build a community center and round house so current and future generations of Indigenous people can thrive in the Bay Area.)
Tuesday, November 8 • 12:00 - 6:00 pm
#NoDAPL RALLY at State Capitol Building in Sacramento
Host: Lillian and Sophia Baker
Please join us as we stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on their mission to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Location: California State Capitol, 1315 10th St, Sacramento More info
November 9 - 12
Bay Area #NoDAPL Smudge Down the Banks
Host: Medicine Nation
November 9th launches a National Week of Action to "Smudge Down The Banks" in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against Dakota Access Pipeline. San Francisco is home to Wells Fargo World HQ, one of the largest investors in DAPL. Through the power of smudge, we are peacefully and prayerfully demanding the financial industry's complete divestment of funds from DAPL.
Location: Wells Fargo World HQ, 420 Montgomery Street, San Francisco More info National Event page
Thursday, November 10 • 3:30 - 5:30 pm
Union Workers Block the Dirty Money Pipeline
Host: Climate Workers
Join fellow union members, workers and supporters to stand with the Land and Water Protectors at Standing Rock and call on the banks financing the Dakota Access Pipeline to pull their money from the project.
Location: Wells Fargo Bank ATM, 1221 Broadway, Oakland More Info
Sunday, November 13 • 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
What Does Land Mean to Us?
Host: Sogorea Te Land Trust
In this meeting we discuss what it looks like to be an ally or accomplice to the work of people from the land you occupy. Ariel Luckey will be presenting, we will have a discussion about Dakota Access Pipeline and Sacred Sites right here that are in danger of being destroyed. Breakfast and light lunch will be provided.
Location: Intertribal Friendship House, 523 International Blvd, Oakland More Info
NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION!
Tuesday, November 15 • 6:30 am
Bay Area Stands for No Dakota Access PipelineHost: Idle No More SF Bay, Diablo Rising Tide, 350.org
National Day of Action called by Indigenous Environmental Network and 350.org
Sunrise Ceremony at San Francisco Civic Center Plaza followed by solidarity action and rally at the Army Corps of Engineers office, demanding they revoke the permits to bore under the Missouri River and complete a full Environmental Impact Statement.
Location: San Francisco Civic Center Plaza (Polk & Grove) to US Army Corps of Engineers, 1455 Market St. @ 11th St. (just south of Van Ness), San Francisco More info
Saturday, November 19 • 8:00 - 11:00 pm
Thanks Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving
Host: La Peña and the Free Land Project
Thangs Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving is an annual cultural arts event that brings Native and non-Native artists, activists and communities together to explore the complex history of Thanksgiving and to acknowledge the legacy of U.S. colonialism and genocide against Native Americans.
Location: La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley More Info
There's also a program for kids & families, 10:00 - 11:00 am More info
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January 20, 2017 at 7am
Freedom Plaza
1355 Pennsylvania Ave NW
(14th St and Pennsylvania Ave)
Washington, D.C.
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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* SURJ compiled this extensive list of activities coming up to oppose DAPL. I hope everyone has heard about the big demonstration early on Tuesday, November 15. There are lots of other events. Read on and come out!
January 20, 2017 at 7am
Freedom Plaza
1355 Pennsylvania Ave NW
(14th St and Pennsylvania Ave)
Washington, D.C.
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Chelsea faces charges related to suicice attempt
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Chelsea Manning ends 5 day hunger strike after Army agrees to medical treatment
Chelsea Manning ended her hunger strike today (Sept 13) after the Army finally agreed to treatment for her gender dysphoria.
"This is all that I wanted – for them to let me be me," said Chelsea Manning.
"But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long and why such drastic measures were needed in order to get this help that was recommended."
Chelsea was shown a memo today stating she will receive gender-reassignment surgery under the DoD's new policy affecting transgender service members.
If this occurs, Manning will be the first trans prisoner in the US to receive this treatment, setting a precedent that could benefit thousands of transgender inmates.
"This medical care is absolutely vital for Chelsea. It was the government's refusal to provide her with necessary care that led her to attempt suicide earlier this year," said Chase Strangio, Chelsea's attorney at the ACLU, "and it was all the more troubling when she became subject to an investigation and possible punishment in connection with the suicide attempt.
We hope that the government recognizes that charging Chelsea with the crime of being denied essential health care is outrageous and drops those charges." Read more here
Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Stipe protest
inhumane charges against Chelsea
After years of inhumane treatment from the Army, Chelsea Manning attempted to take her life on July 5th, 2016.
Although happy to be alive, Chelsea is now facing disciplinary charges from the Army related to her own suicide attempt.
If convicted of these absurd "administrative offenses", Chelsea could face indefinite solitary confinement for the rest of her prison term (30 years).
Daniel Ellsberg: "I stand with Chelsea Manning. I hope you will too."
Michael Stipe: "I support human rights for all people. As an American patriot it is my duty to stand with Chelsea Manning... This is unjustifiable. It is unfair, and it needs to be stopped." Read more and watch the videos
Chelsea will face a disciplinary board later this month, and could very likely be charged for her own suicide attempt.
Michael Stipe: "I support human rights for all people. As an American patriot it is my duty to stand with Chelsea Manning... This is unjustifiable. It is unfair, and it needs to be stopped." Read more and watch the videosChelsea will face a disciplinary board later this month, and could very likely be charged for her own suicide attempt.
Chelsea can continue to be a powerful voice for reform, but we need your help to make that happen. Help us support Chelsea in prison, maximize her voice in the media, continue public education, fund her legal appeals team, and build a powerful movement for presidential pardon.
Please donate today!
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
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Letter from a prisoner involved in the current prison strike:
Texas Prison Officials retaliate against me
for protesting prison slavery
By Keith "Malik" Washington
On October 5, 2016, I was transferred to the Telford Unit from the Coffield Unit. At Coffield, I had become the target of a coordinated effort by the State of Texas to retaliate against me for organizing a campaign that seeks to end prison slavery.
There are elements and individuals within the Texas Criminal Justice System that don't want to acknowledge the humanity of prisoners. The Slave Plantation mentality is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of the oppressor and the oppressed.
Telford, where I am now housed, is the home of a horrible Solitary Confinement control unit. I was sent to this control unit in order to be neutralized.
Prison officials are also using their new Social Media Ban to punish me when my friends or supporters post any kind of information about me. It is crucially important that you continue to share with the world what is happening to me and to so many other imprisoned Freedom Fighters who are trapped inside Amerikan prisons. This attempt to silence prisoner voices and the voices of our free-world supporters is a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Journalist Raven Rakia, who resides in New York City, actually traveled to Texas to interview me for an upcoming exposé she is working on. Texas prison officials denied her access to me!! I just cannot describe to you how dangerous this situation is becoming.
I attempted to place Raven Rakia and other media correspondents and friends on my visiting list. Prison officials denied receiving any updated visitation forms from me!
Sisters and brothers, I cannot fight these people without your help. I am asking you to call the Telford Unit in New Boston, Texas -- 903-628-3171 -- and demand that I be granted visits from media correspondents, friends, and lawyers. I am requesting that media correspondents and lawyers attempt to visit me and make contact with me so that I can relay to the public how Texas has framed me and isolated me.
Our struggle begins with amending the 13th amendment: we must abolish Prison Slavery in Amerika!
Furthermore, we must confront and question law enforcement agencies who attempt to demonize and criminalize #Black Lives Matter! The murdering of Black people by the police must be addressed.
Prisoner Rights activist Laura Whitehorn said, "Rather than slaughtering black people outright, the prison system carries out genocide through political repression."
Sisters and brothers, I am taking a risk by communicating these words to you. I am asking you to do something to help me shed light on the nature of the Texas Criminal Justice System.
Dare to struggle, dare to win! All power to the people!
Keith H. Washington #1487958
Telford Unit
3899 State Hwy 98
New Boston, TX 75570-5669
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Letter from a prisoner involved in the current prison strike:
Texas Prison Officials retaliate against me
for protesting prison slavery
By Keith "Malik" Washington
On October 5, 2016, I was transferred to the Telford Unit from the Coffield Unit. At Coffield, I had become the target of a coordinated effort by the State of Texas to retaliate against me for organizing a campaign that seeks to end prison slavery.
There are elements and individuals within the Texas Criminal Justice System that don't want to acknowledge the humanity of prisoners. The Slave Plantation mentality is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of the oppressor and the oppressed.
Telford, where I am now housed, is the home of a horrible Solitary Confinement control unit. I was sent to this control unit in order to be neutralized.
Prison officials are also using their new Social Media Ban to punish me when my friends or supporters post any kind of information about me. It is crucially important that you continue to share with the world what is happening to me and to so many other imprisoned Freedom Fighters who are trapped inside Amerikan prisons. This attempt to silence prisoner voices and the voices of our free-world supporters is a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Journalist Raven Rakia, who resides in New York City, actually traveled to Texas to interview me for an upcoming exposé she is working on. Texas prison officials denied her access to me!! I just cannot describe to you how dangerous this situation is becoming.
I attempted to place Raven Rakia and other media correspondents and friends on my visiting list. Prison officials denied receiving any updated visitation forms from me!
Sisters and brothers, I cannot fight these people without your help. I am asking you to call the Telford Unit in New Boston, Texas -- 903-628-3171 -- and demand that I be granted visits from media correspondents, friends, and lawyers. I am requesting that media correspondents and lawyers attempt to visit me and make contact with me so that I can relay to the public how Texas has framed me and isolated me.
Our struggle begins with amending the 13th amendment: we must abolish Prison Slavery in Amerika!
Furthermore, we must confront and question law enforcement agencies who attempt to demonize and criminalize #Black Lives Matter! The murdering of Black people by the police must be addressed.
Prisoner Rights activist Laura Whitehorn said, "Rather than slaughtering black people outright, the prison system carries out genocide through political repression."
Sisters and brothers, I am taking a risk by communicating these words to you. I am asking you to do something to help me shed light on the nature of the Texas Criminal Justice System.
Dare to struggle, dare to win! All power to the people!
Keith H. Washington #1487958
Telford Unit
3899 State Hwy 98
New Boston, TX 75570-5669
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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition
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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/
UPDATE:
Today is the 406th day that Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
languishes in prison doing felony time for a misdemeanor crime he did not
commit. Today is also the day that Robert McKay, a spokesperson for the
Free Rev. Pinkney campaign, gave testimony before United Nations
representatives about the plight of Rev. Pinkney at a hearing held in
Chicago. The hearing was called in order to shed light upon the
mistreatment of African-Americans in the United States and put it on an
international stage. And yet as the UN representatives and audience heard
of the injustices in the Pinkney case many gasped in disbelief and asked
with frowns on their faces, "how is this possible?" But disbelief quickly
disappeared when everyone realized these were the same feelings they had
when they first heard of Flint and we all know what happened in Flint. FREE
REV. PINKNEY NOW.
Please send letters to:
Marquette Branch Prison
Rev. Edward Pinkney N-E-93 #294671
1960 US Hwy 41 South
Marquette, MI 49855
Please donate at http://bhbanco.org (Donate button) or send checks to BANCO:
c/o Dorothy Pinkney
1940 Union St.
Benton Harbor, MI 49022
BACKGROUND:
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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State Seeks to Remove Innocent PA Lifer's Attorney! Free Corey Walker!
The PA Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed legal action to remove Corey Walker's attorney, Rachel Wolkenstein, in November 2014. On Tuesday, February 9, 2016 the evidentiary hearing to terminate Wolkenstein as Corey Walker's pro hac vice lawyer continues before Judge Lawrence Clark of the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas in Harrisburg, PA.
Walker, assisted by Wolkenstein, filed three sets of legal papers over five months in 2014 with new evidence of Walker's innocence and that the prosecution and police deliberately used false evidence to convict him of murder. Two weeks after Wolkenstein was granted pro hac vice status, the OAG moved against her and Walker.
The OAG claims that Wolkenstein's political views and prior legal representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal and courtroom arrest by the notorious Judge Albert Sabo makes it "intolerable" for her to represent Corey Walker in the courts of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Over the past fifteen months the OAG has effectively stopped any judicial action on the legal challenges of Corey Walker and his former co-defendant, Lorenzo Johnson against their convictions and sentences to life imprisonment without parole while it proceeds in its attempts to remove Wolkenstein.
This is retaliation against Corey Walker who is innocent and framed. Walker and his attorney won't stop until they thoroughly expose the police corruption and deliberate presentation of false evidence to convict Corey Walker and win his freedom.
This outrageous attack on Corey Walker's fundamental right to his lawyer of choice and challenge his conviction must cease. The evidence of his innocence and deliberate prosecutorial frame up was suppressed for almost twenty years. Corey Walker must be freed!
Read: Jim Crow Justice – The Frame-up Of Corey Walker by Charles Brover
Go to FreeCoreyWalker.org to provide help and get more information.
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TAKE ACTION: Mumia is sick
Website:
| Judge Robert Mariani of the U.S. District Court has issued an order in Mumia's case, granting Mumia's lawyers Bret Grote and Robert Boyle's motion to supplement the record. New medical records documenting Mumia's deteriorated condition from February and March, will be presented June 6th. Judge Mariani has also instructed the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to provide any updates and changes in DOC hep C treatment and policies which affect the plaintiff's treatment. Calling into Prison Radio, Mumia noted: "My friends, my brothers, it ain't over 'til it's over, but there is some motion. It means that we're moving closer to hopefully some real treatment not of my symptoms, but of my disease. I thank you all for being there. And freedom is a constant struggle. I love you all. From what used to be death row, this is Mumia, your brother." Mumia remains quite ill. While stable, his curable hepatitis C is still active and progressive. The only treatment Mumia has received over the last 14 months to this day is skin ointment and photo therapy. He has not received the medically indicated treatment for hep C, the very condition that put him in the Intensive Care Unit in March 2015. Hepatitis C is a progressive disease that attacks Mumia's organs, skin and liver. Unless the court orders the new hepatitis C treatment - one pill a day for 12 weeks, with a 95% cure rate - Mumia's health will remain at serious risk. Before the court is the preliminary injunction motion, which demands immediate medical care. The exhaustion of administrative remedy and the procedural hurdles make it extremely difficult for people in prison to actually get their grievances heard through the review process. The Prison Litigation Reform Act was passed specifically to create these very almost insurmountable barriers to access to the courts. Please read the New Yorker article, Why it is Nearly Impossible for Prisoners to Sue Prisons. In Abu-Jamal vs. Kerestes, one very telling point was when the DOC's Director of Medical Care, Dr. Paul Noel, took the stand. He said that he had never testified before in court! He has worked for the DOC for over a decade. That meant that no prisoner had access to adversarial cross examination. Before Mumia's day in court in late December 2015, no prisoner ever had the opportunity to expose the PA DOC's blatant lies. Lies so bold that Dr. Noel disavowed his own signed affidavit, and in court he stated that he "did not sign it and it was false and misleading". The knowingly false and fabricated document was put in the record by Laura Neal, Senior DOC attorney. Take Action for MumiaCall prison officials to demand immediate treatment! Dr. Paul Noel-Director of Medical Care, DOC 717-728-5309 x 5312 John Wetzel- Secretary of DOC 717+728-2573 x 4109 Dr. Carl Keldie-Chief Medical Officer, Correct Care Solutions 800-592-2974 x 5783 Theresa DelBalso-Superintendent, SCI Mahanoy 570-773-2158 x 8101 |
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PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!
WE DEMAND:
PUBLIC HEALTH, NOT CORPORATE WEALTH!
IMMEDIATE AND FREE TREATMENT FOR ALL HCV-INFECTED PRISONERS!
NO EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!
JAIL DRUG PROFITEERS, FREE MUMIA!
This message from:
Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • www.laboractionmumia.org
06 January 2016
Mumia Is Innocent! Free Mumia!
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Imam Jamil (H.Rap Brown) moved
Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was moved by bus from USP Canaan in Waymart, PA. to USP Tucson, Arizona. His mailing address is: USP Tucson United States Penitentiary P.O. Box Tucson, AZ. 85734 (BOP number 99974555)
Sign the Petition:
https://www.causes.com/actions/1671495-the-forgotten-imam-jamil-abdullah-al-amin-h-rap-brown?utm_campaign=post_mailer%2Fcampaign_update.cb_71432&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes
Sign the Petition:
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, THE Bureau of Prisons, The Governor of Georgia
We are aware of a review being launched of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted and or deserve a new trail because of flawed forensic evidence and or wrongly reported evidence. It was stated in the Washington Post in April of 2012 that Justice Department Officials had known for years that flawed forensic work led to convictions of innocent people. We seek to have included in the review of such cases that of Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. We understand that all cases reviewed will include the Innocence Project. We look forward to your immediate attention to these overdue wrongs.
ASAP: The Forgotten Imam Project
P.O. Box 373
Four Oaks, NC 27524
ASAP: The Forgotten Imam Project
P.O. Box 373
Four Oaks, NC 27524
Signed,
Luqman Abdullah-ibn Al-Sidiq
Luqman Abdullah-ibn Al-Sidiq
https://www.causes.com/actions/1671495-the-forgotten-imam-jamil-abdullah-al-amin-h-rap-brown?utm_campaign=post_mailer%2Fcampaign_update.cb_71432&utm_medium=email&utm_source=causes
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Commute Kevin Cooper's Death Sentence
Sign the Petition:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php
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
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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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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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
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
freelorenzojohnson.org
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Sign the Petition:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/petition.php
"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
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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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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Campaign to Free 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
freelorenzojohnson.org
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Time to Move the Standing Rock Pipeline
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B. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Time to Move the Standing Rock Pipeline
President Obama has pointed a way out of a dangerous standoff over an oil pipeline being built in North Dakota. He told an interviewer on Tuesday that the Army Corps of Engineers was looking for a new pipeline route, presumably away from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, whose members and allies have been protesting the project for months, saying it threatens the tribe’s sacred lands and water supply.
It was a welcome hint of good news in an intensely bitter confrontation that came wrapped in historic injustice and seemed destined to end in grief. The $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline is meant to carry crude oil from the Bakken fields of western North Dakota to Illinois, 1,170 miles to the east. It would not enter tribal land but it would pass close enough for the Sioux to fear grave damage from a leak or spill. Its current proposed route runs less than half a mile north of the reservation and under the Missouri River, a source of drinking water. Though the pipeline would mostly cross private property, the tribe also argues that these have been the Sioux’s ancestral lands since antiquity, and construction would damage sites of deep cultural and historic significance, including burial grounds.
A federal judge in September denied the tribe’s request for an injunction to block construction, but the tribe has continued to press the Army corps to withhold permits, which the builders need because the pipeline would cross a navigable waterway. The Sioux accuse the corps of being a rubber stamp for the oil industry, of ignoring its objections and of illegally issuing permits in violation of the Clean Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and other federal laws — charges that the corps denies.
The tribe’s sense of grievance is understandable, given that the pipeline was shifted in its direction, away from Bismarck, N.D., because federal regulators saw it as a potential threat to that city’s water supply.
The Dakota and Lakota of the Standing Rock tribe would hardly be the first American Indians to pay the price for white people who want to move environmental hazards out of sight, out of mind and out of their water faucets. If the federal government shifts the pipeline route again — perhaps closer to Bismarck — maybe that will prompt a full, meaningful discussion of the pipeline’s merits, with a fairer assessment of its true costs.
A pipeline may well be the most profitable and efficient way to move a half-million barrels of crude oil a day across the Plains. But in a time of oil gluts and plummeting oil prices, is it worth it? Is it worth the degradation of the environment, the danger to the water, the insult to the heritage of the Sioux?
The law-enforcement response to the largely peaceful Standing Rock impasse has led to grim clashes at protest camps between hundreds of civilians and officers in riot gear. The confrontation cannot help summoning a wretched history. Not far from Standing Rock, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, sacred land was stolen from the Sioux, plundered for gold and other minerals, and then carved into four monumental presidential heads: an American shrine built from a brazen act of defacement.
The Sioux know as well as any of America’s native peoples that justice is a shifting concept, that treaties, laws and promises can wilt under the implacable pressure for mineral extraction. But without relitigating the history of the North American conquest, perhaps the protesters can achieve their aim to stop or reroute the pipeline.
“We are monitoring this closely,” Mr. Obama said. “I think as a general rule, my view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans.” Of course there is. There has to be.
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2) More Than 200 Migrants Drown Off Libya Trying to Reach Europe
2) More Than 200 Migrants Drown Off Libya Trying to Reach Europe
More people are dying while attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe: at least 239 drowned in two separate shipwrecks, the United Nations reported on Thursday.
Nearly as many migrants have died at sea this year as all of last year, the United Nations’ refugee agency has said, even though far fewer have attempted the perilous crossing.
Smugglers Are Changing Their Tactics
The sharp rise in fatalities — 3,940 deaths this year, compared with 3,700 in all of 2015 — can be attributed in part to the changing tactics used by smugglers. They are loading thousands of people at a time and using less seaworthy boats, including inflatable rubber rafts that do not last the crossing.
On Wednesday, a rubber dinghy believed to be carrying scores of migrants from West Africa collapsed a few hours after it left Libya early in the morning, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration told Reuters. The spokesman, Flavio Di Giacomo, cited accounts by survivors who said that most of the passengers, including several children, had drowned.
Another raft carrying about 130 people from Libya sank around the same time, according to two women who had been rescued. The other passengers had not been recovered.
Fewer Migrants, but Greater Challenges
Despite the overall decrease in the number of migrants, the smugglers are straining the capacity of rescue services to cope.
More than one million people made the crossing last year. So far this year, about 328,000 have tried to do so, the United Nations refugee agency said last week.
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3) Bank of America Accused of Gouging Ex-Inmates With Card Fees
3) Bank of America Accused of Gouging Ex-Inmates With Card Fees
NEW YORK — Bank of America Corp has been hit with a proposed class action accusing it of charging exorbitant fees to thousands of former Arizona prison inmates who were issued debit cards when they were released.
Filed on Thursday in federal court in Phoenix, the lawsuit accused the bank of exploiting "one of the most vulnerable groups imaginable" - individuals coming out of prison without a job or sometimes even a place to go.
The prepaid cards are issued to prisoners to return money confiscated when they were arrested or that they earned through work programs.
Prisoners are given no choice other than the fee-laden cards to obtain their own money from inmate accounts, the complaint said. Charges include some that ordinary consumers would not have to pay, such as $15 to withdraw money at a bank teller window, the complaint said.
"They get charged a fee just to walk up to a teller to find out how much money they have in their accounts," said Richard Golomb, lead counsel for the ex-prisoners. The fees are based on a debit card contract "that they never agreed to and never signed," he said.
Representatives of Bank of America and the Arizona Department of Corrections could not immediately be reached for comment.
More than 19,000 inmates are released each year by the Arizona Department of Corrections, the lawsuit said. Bank of America can impose whatever terms it wants because it has an exclusive right to provide the debit cards to Arizona inmates, the lawsuit said.
Bank of America is the latest bank to face a lawsuit over prepaid cards issued to prisoners. JPMorgan Chase & Co in August agreed to pay $446,822 to settle a similar action stemming from its contract with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to issue debit cards to ex-inmates nationwide.
According to the complaint against Bank of America, the debit cards exploit a loophole in federal regulations that protect the rights of other consumers.
Under the U.S. Electronic Funds Transfer Act and related regulations, companies cannot force individuals to receive wages on prepaid debit cards, but that rule applies to "recurring" payments, not one-time payments to former inmates, the lawsuit said.
The case is: Brill et al v Bank of America, U.S. District Court, Arizona District, No 16-cv-3817
(Editing by Anthony Lin and Matthew Lewis)
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4) Communities Across the Globe Mobilize to Support #NoDAPL (and You Can Too)
Saturday, 05 November 2016 00:00 By Candice Bernd, Truthout | Reporthttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38252-communities-across-the-globe-mobilize-to-support-nodapl-and-you-can-too
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
4) Communities Across the Globe Mobilize to Support #NoDAPL (and You Can Too)
Saturday, 05 November 2016 00:00 By Candice Bernd, Truthout | Reporthttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38252-communities-across-the-globe-mobilize-to-support-nodapl-and-you-can-too
Since last Thursday's violent clash in which 141 Indigenous Water Protectors were arrested, marked with numbers and put into dog-kennel-like holding cells after defending land directly in the route of the Dakota Access pipeline, activists from across the US and around the world have responded with a groundswell of actions in solidarity. These actions have strategically targeted the Dakota Access pipeline's funders, as well as law enforcement agencies sending resources and personnel to brutalize Indigenous resisters and allies.
Isabella Zizi, who is of the northern Cheyenne, Arikara and Muscogee Creek nations protested at Citigroup's headquarters in San Francisco on Monday. "I wanted to let those out in Standing Rock know that we are supporting them even if we can't make it out [to North Dakota]," Zizi told Truthout. "We will do anything that we can to be in solidarity with them."
A global outcry has followed an attack on Native Water Protectors gathered on 1851 Oceti Sakowin treaty land north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on Thursday, October 27. More than 200 law enforcement officers from seven different states and National Guard personnel used flash grenades, bean bag launchers, pepper spray and long range acoustic devices, and even allegedly fired live ammunition on Indigenous Land Defenders protecting sacred burial grounds.
Officials charged one Native Water Protector with attempted murder after the October 27 standoff, even as Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said he could not confirm Land Defenders fired shots during Thursday's raid.
President Obama has since said that the Army Corps of Engineers is considering rerouting the pipeline -- slated to carry Bakken crude from North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa and to an Illinois distribution center -- after last week's escalated crackdown. "We're monitoring this closely," President Obama told NowThis. "My view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans. And I think that right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline."
But only hours after the president's comments on Dakota Access, the US Army Corps of Engineers ordered North Dakota police to move in and arrest Indigenous Water Protectors and demolish a makeshift bridge they built over a creek to reportedly gain access to private land where the latest round of construction is occurring. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets against Native Land Defenders this week.
In the face of this advancing construction, Native communities and activists around the world are taking bold action in solidarity with those at Standing Rock. Since Thursday's police sweep, activists in the US and abroad have strategically targeted the powerful interests bankrolling the pipeline by locking themselves down inside banks, protesting the pipeline's billionaire backers, rallying at city halls to protest public resources and police personnel being sent to suppress Native Water Protectors, speaking out online by "checking in" at Standing Rock on Facebook, and donating money to the protesters' legal fund and to cover other expenses.
Activists have also targeted President Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, with Native youth flooding Clinton's campaign headquarters in Brooklyn to demand she oppose the pipeline on the day of the mass arrests at Standing Rock. There were also demonstrations to demand the pipeline's cancellation near a Clinton presidential campaign fundraiser with President Obama in Beverly Hills on October 24.
Investigations by LittleSis and Food and Water Watch reveal that 38 banks have extended more than $10.25 billion in loans to fund the Energy Transfer group of companies behind the pipeline, which include Energy Transfer Partners, Energy Transfer Equity, Sunoco Logistics and Dakota Access LLC. Additionally, Canada's largest pipeline company, Enbridge, with the Texas-based Marathon Petroleum Corporation put down $2.6 billion last month to become joint stakeholders of 49 percent of the Dakota Access pipeline. Phillips 66 also owns a 25 percent stake in the pipeline.
Seventeen major banks are backing Dakota Access LLC directly with a $2.5 billion credit line to build the pipeline. Major funders include Citibank, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, TD Securities, ABN AMRO Capital, DNB First Bank, ICBC London, SMBC Nikko Securities and Société Générale.
After the Red Warrior Camp at Standing Rock (Sacred Stone and Oceti Sakowin are among the other camps), put out a call for solidarity actions last Thursday, protests have unfolded in the US and abroad. In Canada, on Friday night, Indigenous resisters from the Kahnawake Mohawk nation shut down a highway bridge leading to Montreal. In Kingston, Ontario, on Saturday, several TD Bank ATMs were smashed with hammers and spray-painted with "NO DAPL." In New Zealand, the Indigenous Māori people have been expressing support by posting videos of a traditional Māori war dance called the "haka" to a Facebook group called "Haka with Standing Rock."
In the US, several protests at banks funding the pipeline have led to arrests of Native activists and their allies. In San Francisco on Monday, 12 activists with Diablo Rising Tide were arrested at the Citigroup bank headquarters after shutting down the elevators that lead to the bank's corporate offices to protest its role as the lead arranger and lender to the Dakota Access pipeline. More than 50 people protested in front of the bank, including Zizi, who organizes with Idle No More SF Bay.
"Personally, it is affecting me because my relatives do live in [the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota], which is literally right in the area where the Bakken oil is being extracted and pulled out by the oil trains and all. It's really heartbreaking to see my relatives and all the tribes and all the people having to deal with that."
That same day in Salt Lake City, eight people were arrested after chaining themselves together at a downtown Wells Fargo location, demanding the bank cancel its investment in Dakota Access.
"What [those at Standing Rock] are doing for us, putting their bodies on the line and standing there with no weapons, peacefully being Water Protectors, we want them to know that we hear them. We're here. That's why we did what we did," said Carol Surveyor, who was at the Wells Fargo protest Monday and is Navajo/Diné. She cited the 2015 Gold King Mine wastewater spill's effect on the Navajo Nation's water as a personal motivation to act in solidarity with Standing Rock. "I know what happens to a town, to these communities, when they go into a panic when their water is contaminated," she said.
Surveyor, who has traveled to Standing Rock, told Truthout that several activists involved with the bank action also staged a sit-in at city hall in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, aiming to pressure city officials to pass a resolution that would formally express the city's support for the Standing Rock Sioux and their struggle against the pipeline.
In other cities, activists protested their local police departments' complicity in the violence being enacted against resisters at Standing Rock. More than 1,000 people demonstrated at the Minneapolis city hall on Friday, October 28, to protest the deployment of Hennepin County police to brutalize Native Water Protectors. The rally led to a sit-in at the office of Sheriff Rich Stanek, who has sent county deputies to Standing Rock.
On Thursday, protesters in Austin, Texas, gathered outside the Texas Parks and Wildlife Headquarters to demand that Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren step down or be removed from the state's Parks and Wildlife Commission. They cited Warren's appointment by Gov. Greg Abbot as a conflict of interest. Warren gavemore than $500,000 to Abbott during his gubernatorial campaign, and a combined $30,000 to Abbot's 2006 and 2010 campaigns for state attorney general, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.
"I wonder if the Texas Parks and Wildlife scientists would be as amenable [to oil and gas development] if they weren't pressured by the [industry reps on the] commission," said Lori Glover, an organizer and cofounder of Defend Big Bend, which is fighting another Energy Transfer Partners pipeline, the Trans-Pecos, through the state's Big Bend region. "There have been so many pipeline explosions over the past few years, yet [the commission] continues to say that there's no problem, and gives out these [oil and gas] permits and allows these things to happen."
The Austin rally also addressed the Houston-based Apache Corporation's plans to drill for oil and gas around West Texas' serene Balmorhea State Park and its well-known spring-fed pools.
"The significance of what's happening [in Standing Rock] is no different than when they marched into my family's home at bayonet point, took them away from their dinner tables, told them 'Grab what you can. You're out of here. You're going to Oklahoma,'" said Neta Rhyne, who is a Cherokee descendent of the Trail of Tears, and is fighting to save the Balmorhea springs. "But I think there's a new awakening. People are getting tired of it. They're realizing the impact that this is going to have on future generations."
Native Water Protectors and allied protesters jumped on an opportunity to confront Warren directly during the quarterly commission meeting Thursday, as the commission weighed a proposal to run six pipelines through the wildlife management area in the state.
After taking heat from several Indigenous leaders and environmentalists, Warren agreed to meet with Native leaders of the Society of Native Nations to discuss the desecreation of Native burial sites after one of the group's members, Pete Hefflin, asked him directly about the issue. The two exchanged contact informration, and Warren later recused himself from the vote on the proposal.
Other recent actions included lockdowns in Providence, Rhode Island, where two people blocked the entrance to a TD Bank branch and corporate office; Mount Laurel, New Jersey, where four people were arrested after sitting-in at TD Bank's corporate headquarters there; and Philadelphia, where 25 people sat-in at a TD Bank ATM lobby.
Protests at banks funding the pipeline and at corporate headquarters of companies directly behind the pipeline have jumped off in cities across the country in recent months, including large demonstrations in New York City, where on Tuesday, dozens of activists disrupted morning commutes by blockading the Grand Central Terminal before marching to the offices of JP Morgan and Bank of America. Other large demonstrations have erupted in Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Houston, New Haven and elsewhere.
Last weekend, more than a million people "checked in" to Standing Rock on Facebook, in an overwhelming display of online solidarity and an attempt to confuse police efforts to monitor which individuals are at the resistance camps in Standing Rock. Meanwhile, hundreds of people have showed their support online by contributing to the camps' legal funds and donating to pay for expenses at the Standing Rock camps.
In one way or another, these communities are responding directly to the Red Warrior Camp's call for solidarity actions in the aftermath of last Thursday's police sweep. The statement asks allies to travel directly to Standing Rock if they can, as advancing police forces and winter weather have made sustaining the encampment increasingly difficult.
The camp asks allies who can't be present at Standing Rock to take escalated action against strategic targets by going to NoDAPLSolidarity.org and registering within the global solidarity network to target local Army Corps, banks, pipeline companies, corporations and elected officials responsible for the pipeline with nonviolent direct action. Lastly, the statement asks allies to send donations to the official Red Warrior Camp Fund and Official Legal Fund. The Sacred Stone Camp is also accepting donations at the Official Sacred Stone Camp Fund.
Other ways to help include calling elected officials, such as North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, the Morton County Sheriff's Department, the Army Corps of Engineers and the White House, and staying vocal on social media.
"I can't physically go to North Dakota, but I wanted to still be an ally in this movement, in this fight, by taking direct action locally," said Laura Borth, who was arrested after locking down at a TD Bank in Providence, Rhode Island. "It's more than just a climate change issue or a climate justice issue, it's about this violence and oppression that's been facing Indigenous people for years in our country."
CANDICE BERND
Candice Bernd is an editor/staff reporter at Truthout. With her partner, she is writing and producing Don't Frack With Denton, a documentary chronicling how her hometown became the first city to ban fracking in Texas, and its subsequent overturn in the state legislature. She is also a contributor to Truthout's anthology on police violence, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Follow her on Twitter: @CandiceBernd.
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5) Colin Kaepernick Just Started A Black Panther-Inspired Youth Camp
5) Colin Kaepernick Just Started A Black Panther-Inspired Youth Camp
The athlete plans to expand the program to cities across the country.
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6) Another Philippine Mayor Accused of Drug Crimes by Duterte Is Killed
6) Another Philippine Mayor Accused of Drug Crimes by Duterte Is Killed
MANILA — A Philippine mayor who had been accused of drug trafficking by President Rodrigo Duterte was shot and killed by police officers in his jail cell on Saturday, the police said.
The mayor, Rolando Espinosa Sr. of Albuera, a town in Leyte Province in the central Philippines, had been arrested in October, several weeks after Mr. Duterte included him in a list of about 150 Philippine officialswho he said were involved in narcotics. Mr. Espinosa, who had denied any wrongdoing, is the second politician on the list to have been killed by police officers in a little more than a week.
The Leyte provincial police said Saturday that Mr. Espinosa and his cellmate, identified as Raul Yap, had been killed in a “firefight” with police officers, who woke them at dawn while searching their cell. The provincial police chief, Juvy Espinido, told a Manila radio station that both men had “resisted” the police but said he could not provide further details.
Later, the police said they had recovered two handguns from the jail cell. Bags containing what was believed to be methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia were also found inside the cell, the police said.
Calls to spokesmen for the national police in Manila were not returned.
Gwendolyn Pimentel-Gana, a member of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, an independent government body, said the deaths “raise serious questions on the responsibility of the state to protect persons deprived of liberty, especially in relation to the primordial right to live of every human being.”
Ms. Pimentel-Gana called on the police to “hold the people responsible for the deaths accountable.”
Mr. Espinosa died just eight days after Samsudin Dimaukom, another mayor accused of drug crimes by Mr. Duterte, was killed by police officers in the southern Philippines. Mr. Dimaukom, who also denied being involved in narcotics, was gunned down at a police checkpoint along with nine men traveling with him; the police said people in Mr. Dimaukom’s party had fired on officers.
Since taking office in June, Mr. Duterte has embarked on a bloody campaign against drugs — particularly shabu, a cheap form of methamphetamine — that has left about 2,000 people dead, some killed by police officers and others by vigilantes. Human rights groups and Western governments have criticized the campaign, but it has been popular in the Philippines.
In August, Mr. Duterte read on television his list of officials allegedly involved in drugs, warning them to surrender to the authorities. He offered no evidence of their guilt and later said some names might have been put on the list by mistake.
Mr. Espinosa, who was accused by Mr. Duterte along with his son, Kerwin Espinosa, turned himself in to the police in Manila, while his son went into hiding. The son has since been detained in Abu Dhabi, and Philippine officials said they were seeking to have him returned.
While Rolando Espinosa was in detention, the police raided his home and killed six of his bodyguards. They said they had found about 24 pounds of shabu on the property. Nevertheless, he was later freed, only to be arrested again in October and charged with illegal possession of drugs and firearms.
A statement on Saturday from the office of Mr. Duterte’s communications secretary, Martin Andanar, called Mr. Espinosa’s death “unfortunate.”
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7) Destroying an 11-Apartment Structure to Build a Mansion
7) Destroying an 11-Apartment Structure to Build a Mansion
For the past two years or so, my daily comings and goings have taken me past a building on my Brooklyn Heights block ripped down to the studs by a developer with the ambition of returning it to the market as a five-story brownstone for $18 million. Renovations are ubiquitous in Brooklyn — home improvement is as distinguishing an element here as surgically taut faces are on Park Avenue — but this project possessed a team of workmen so big it seemed as though a regional airport were under construction. Greeting the foreman, an Irishman with intense eyes who appeared to have landed in the world of HVAC from the world of James Joyce, became such an integral part of my morning habit that I would worry about him on the days he wasn’t out front, poring over blueprints on the hood of his car.
When plans for the building, which included a meditation room, an elevator and a kitchen the size of an Applebee’s, were publicized earlier this year, some who have been on the street for decades and I reveled in talking about the ludicrous obscenity of it all. Many of the people on my block live extremely well and very quietly, bound by a distaste for ostentation that anyone moving into a 7,750-square-foot, seven-bedroom townhouse staged with potted boxwoods on the stoop was unlikely to regard with a similar ardor.
The issue with lavish conversions like this one — the transformation of multiunit dwellings to single-family houses, a practice in evidence across New York City — extends beyond, of course, the threat posed to a kind of vanishing, laid-back patrician authenticity. The house about to go up for sale on my block used to contain 11 rental apartments, which lent a semblance of economic diversity to a street otherwise characterized by the blessed fortunes of the ownership class. Its rebirth as a home for someone so extraordinarily wealthy that the merely rich would now seem to occupy a different orbit represented not only a further step in the geographic isolation of the ruling order from everyone else, but crucially, a shrinking of the housing supply at a moment of astronomical costs.
During the past eight years, as the crisis of homelessness has intensified — there are currently close to 62,000 people sleeping in city sheltersevery night — there have been at least 260 multidwelling buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn that have been turned into houses for individual families, resulting in the loss of more than 830 apartments from the market.
In some neighborhoods the figures are especially stark: More than a quarter of the restructurings have been in the ZIP codes encompassing Park Slope and Boerum Hill, according to the city’s Buildings Department. Since 2008, there have been more than 70 conversions in the West Village and Chelsea, neighborhoods one would have thought were long past the point of gentrification. Just the other day, the real estate site Apartment Listreleased a November report ranking rent prices in Chelsea as the highest in the city. A two-bedroom apartment there typically goes for more than $6,000 a month.
Debates about affordable housing have largely revolved around zoning and where density should be increased, with little attention paid to the effects of actively reducing density in many parts of the city or potentially offsetting gains of new construction. What can be done? In most cases, when a building is converted to a townhouse meant for one family — in particular, the kind of house with a wine cellar and a lap pool — that house, in its new configuration, will generate increased property tax revenue.
The house on my block, for instance, which was bought a few years ago for over $6 million, is now about to be listed for just under $16 million, with a prominent broker, Leonard Steinberg, who specializes in selling luxury apartments in Lower Manhattan.
When I asked Mr. Steinberg to whom he would be marketing the house, he said people thinking about a move to places like Greenwich or Scarsdale might be the focus — families who were looking for space of the kind they presumed was not readily available in the city; people without the forbearance or, as he put it, “imagination” to handle big renovations themselves. But of course, suburbanites with limited creativity and vision are precisely the demographic one moves to Brooklyn to avoid.
If the special alchemy of your block feels as if it is in jeopardy — in the case of where I live, a conviviality belies the stateliness, and people gather on one another’s stoops to drink and talk as if it were Mayberry — then a Robin Hood effect might as well kick in. One option could be for the city to divert all of the additional income from those increased taxes to a fund committed to the development of more affordable housing, adding to money already funneled from property taxes to the mission.
You might well end up with the kind of person next door living alone in 10,000 square feet who outsources the distribution of Halloween candy to one of his 650 employees. But maybe you would be able to stomach it all a little more easily.
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8) The Risk to Civil Liberties of Fighting Crime With Big Data
8) The Risk to Civil Liberties of Fighting Crime With Big Data
SAN FRANCISCO — People talk about online security as a cat-and-mouse game of good guys and bad guys. It’s true for good old-fashioned crime, too.
Technology, particularly rapid analysis and sharing of data, is helping the police be more efficient and predict possible crimes. Some would argue that it has even contributed to an overall drop in crime in recent years.
But this type of technology also raises issues of civil liberties, as digital information provided by social media or the sensors of the internet of things is combined with criminal data by companies that sell this information to law enforcement agencies.
The American Civil Liberties Union, citing reports that the Chicago Police Department used a computer analysis to create a “heat list” that unfairly associated innocent people with criminal behavior, has warned about the dangers of the police using big data. Even companies that make money doing this sort of work warn that it comes with civil rights risks.
“We’re heading to a world where every trash can has an identifier. Even I get shocked at the comprehensiveness of what data providers sell,” said Courtney Bowman, who leads the privacy and civil liberties practice at Palantir Technologies, a company in Palo Alto, Calif., that sells data analysis tools. He has lectured on the hazards of predictive policing and the need to prove in court that predictive models follow understandable logic and do not reinforce stereotypes.
Some of this shift to data-based policing seems to be a matter of simple automation. The RELX Group, formerly Reed Elsevier, has for some years been buying and building up databases of police information. One product, called Coplogic, is used by 5,000 police departments in the United States.
Coplogic automates filling out accident reports. When a police officer enters a license plate number, many other fields on the report, like the registered address associated with the car, are automatically filled in. The company says this can halve the time an officer spends in traffic filing a report.
Cities can also use the service to identify their most dangerous traffic spots or, in much the way driving maps predict the fastest route home, predict where road repairs are needed.
“This frees up time and resources for higher-value activities, like predictive policing,” said Roy Marler, vice president of Coplogic. “The state can use this data to get federal funding for roadway improvements.”
RELX has become something like the Ticketmaster of insurance reporting. The company processes about 500,000 requests a month for digital accident reports, mostly from insurance companies, charging a $7 “convenience fee” to provide the information. Cities also receive a cut of the $7 for the distribution.
Thomson Reuters and Dun & Bradstreet also do a big business selling data to law enforcement.
In much the way combining different databases has helped people who place online ads gain insight and make predictions, traffic data now provides a window into crime.
“Criminals are citizens, too,” said William Hatfield, a former Secret Service agent working with RELX. “Even with an outstanding warrant, their car is their pride and joy. When they file with an insurance company, they give accurate information about their address that police can use to find them.”
Sharing data, both among the parts of a big police department and between the police and the private sector, “is a force multiplier,” he said.
Companies working with the military and intelligence agencies have long practiced these kinds of techniques, which the companies are bringing to domestic policing, in much the way surplus military gear has beefed up American SWAT teams.
Palantir first built up its business by offering products like maps of social networks of extremist bombers and terrorist money launderers, and figuring out efficient driving routes to avoid improvised explosive devices.
Palantir used similar data-sifting techniques in New Orleans to spot individuals most associated with murders. Law enforcement departments around Salt Lake City used Palantir to allow common access to 40,000 arrest photos, 520,000 case reports and information like highway and airport data — building human maps of suspected criminal networks.
People in the predictive business sometimes compare what they do to controlling the other side’s “OODA loop,” a term first developed by a fighter pilot and military strategist named John Boyd.
OODA stands for “observe, orient, decide, act” and is a means of managing information in battle.
“Whether it’s war or crime, you have to get inside the other side’s decision cycle and control their environment,” said Robert Stasio, a project manager for cyberanalysis at IBM, and a former United States government intelligence official. “Criminals can learn to anticipate what you’re going to do and shift where they’re working, employ more lookouts.”
IBM sells tools that also enable police to become less predictable, for example, by taking different routes into an area identified as a crime hot spot. It has also conducted studies that show changing tastes among online criminals — for example, a move from hacking retailers’ computers to stealing health care data, which can be used to file for federal tax refunds.
But there are worries about what military-type data analysis means for civil liberties, even among the companies that get rich on it.
“It definitely presents challenges to the less sophisticated type of criminal, but it’s creating a lot of what is called ‘Big Brother’s little helpers,’” Mr. Bowman said. For now, he added, much of the data abundance problem is that “most police aren’t very good at this.”
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9) When Bats Look for Meals Near Wind Power, Bats Die
9) When Bats Look for Meals Near Wind Power, Bats Die
Wind power can help the world fight climate change, but it’s not so great for bats.
A new study of wind turbines in Britain found that each turbine killed one to two bats each month on average, with some killing more than 60. The researchers said that the efforts that are required in many countries to assess the environmental effect of planned wind farms have proved faulty and inadequate in measuring the risk to bats. There are more than 300,000 wind turbines around the world.
The risks to birds of the blades of wind turbines are becoming well understood, but the risk to bats, while known, has been poorly defined until now, said Fiona Mathews, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of mammalian biology at the University of Exeter in England. Bats, she said, might be attracted to turbines, whether because of the noise the machines make or the bugs that are trapped in the air movement: “It’s a ready food supply.”
Her team found bat casualties in unexpected places like high-altitude spots, she said.
Finding the bats, which are small and not colorful, presented special challenges. Using specially trained bat-sniffing dogs, the researchers found the hard-to-spot bat corpses at the bases of turbines at 46 wind farms around England. Dr. Mathews said she contacted an expert who trains dogs to sniff out bodies, bombs and the like for bat duty. “He just killed himself laughing,” she said, and then he told her, “This is the funniest thing anybody’s ever asked me to do.”
Dr. Mathews, who is also the chairwoman of the Mammal Society, a conservation group in England, said that the research in no way suggested that renewable power was a bad thing, but argued that wind power companies should take action to minimize the damage to bats, which pollinate plants and consume pests like mosquitoes. The risk is higher at times of low wind, in part because bats are less likely to take to the air during a hard blow; because turbines are not generating much power anyway during those times of relative calm, stilling the blades or shifting their pitch to limit motion could save many bats, as could curtailing operation during peak bat periods of the year. “You can make a huge difference in the number of bats you’re killing,” she said.
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10) Environmentalists Target Bankers Behind Pipeline
10) Environmentalists Target Bankers Behind Pipeline
In early August, just as protesters from across the country descended on North Dakota to rally against an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, some of the world’s biggest banks signed off on a $2.5 billion loan to help complete the sprawling project.
Now, those banks — which include Citigroup and Wells Fargo of the United States, TD Bank of Canada and Mizuho of Japan — have come under fire for their role in bankrolling the pipeline. In an open letter on Monday, 26 environmental groups urged those banks to halt further loan payments to the project, which the Sioux say threatens their sacred lands and water supply.
In campaigning to reduce the world’s carbon emissions, environmentalists have increasingly focused on the financiers behind the fossil fuel industry — highlighting their role in financing coal, oil and gas projects. It is an expansion of traditional protest efforts, and it has met with some early success.
Environmental groups have also criticized the Dakota Access pipeline as outdated infrastructure with no place in a world racing to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The 1,172-mile pipeline is expected to carry nearly half a million barrels of crude oil daily out of the Bakken fields of North Dakota, according to the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners.
Late last month, hundreds of police in riot gear used pepper spray and rubber bullets to evict protesters from land owned by Energy Transfer. Over 100 people were arrested in the sweep. President Obama said last week that the Army Corps of Engineers was considering an alternate route for the pipeline.
“Banks have a choice to either finance the transition to renewable energy, or to finance pipelines and power plants that will lock us into fossil fuels for the next 40 years,” said Johan Frijns, director of BankTrack, a Netherlands-based advocacy organization that led the campaign. “If we’re serious about fighting climate change, we can’t continue to finance fossil fuel infrastructure of any kind.”
The letter from BankTrack and other environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, was addressed to the Equator Principles Association, a consortium of global banks committed to responsible environmental and social practices.
Thirteen of the 17 banks that participated in the latest loan to the Dakota pipeline project, including all five of the lead banks, are members. The group was holding its annual meeting in London on Monday and Tuesday.
The letter came as climate negotiators gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, to work on the details of executing the Paris climate accord. On the agenda are drafting rules on how to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions, as well as securing financial aid to help poor countries deal with climate change.
Hillary Clinton, the Democrat nominee in the race for the United States presidency, has said she will back the climate policies of President Obama, including continued support of the Paris agreement. Her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, has called global warming a hoax, and has said he would “cancel” the Paris deal if he were elected.
In their battles with banks, environmentalists have scored some early victories. After a concerted effort by climate-change campaigners, several global banks, including Barclays, ING and Deutsche Bank, stepped back over the last two years from projects that involve mountaintop removal mining, a practice experts say is particularly damaging to the environment.
Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase announced that it would no longer finance new coal-fired power plants in the United States or other wealthy nations, a retreat that followed similar announcements by Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. The banks’ move away from coal, however, appeared motivated as much by the plunging profitability of coal as by concerns over climate change.
Experts also question the profitability of the Dakota pipeline, at a time of slumping oil prices.
“A lot of infrastructure investment, particularly pipelines, is built around strong oil-demand projections that go out decades,” said Mark Campanale, founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a financial think tank that focuses on energy and climate change. “If the scenarios around demand for oil is wrong, it’s likely that people are building costly infrastructure on a false promise — that the oil is going to be needed in 30 to 40 years.”
The loan to Energy Transfer and its partners Sunoco Logistics Partners and Phillips 66 was led by Citigroup, Mizuho, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and TD Bank, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Citigroup said that it had already raised concerns over the project with Energy Transfer and advocated engagement with the Sioux tribe. It was closely following the outcomes of the federal government’s efforts to engage local communities in a possible review of the project, the bank said in a statement. A Wells Fargo spokesman, Alan Elias, declined to comment.
Judith Schmidt, a spokeswoman for TD bank, declined to comment on the letter specifically. Mizuho and the Bank of Tokyo could not immediately be reached for comment.
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