Sunday, April 30, 2017

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 2017



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Shut Down Creech! Apr 23-29, 2017

Empire War Status

Support War Resister Pvt. Ryan Johnson

Imprisoned a decade after refusing crimes of his country

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Protest groups to unite as "The Majority" for massive actions across the country on May 1

By Aaron Morrison
March 23, 2017
https://mic.com/articles/171880/protest-groups-to-unite-as-the-majority-for-massive-actions-across-the-country-on-may-1#.UE6C9YgCB

Activist groups are uniting as a broader coalition they've dubbed "The Majority," an idea inspired by the Movement for Black Lives — a collective of organizations in the Black Lives Matter movement — organizers first shared with Mic on Thursday.
More than 50 partners representing black, Latino, the indigenous, LGBTQ, refugees, immigrants, laborers and the poor will collaborate from April 4 through May 1, International Worker's Day, when they'll launch massive protests across the country.
The action will "go beyond moments of outrage, beyond narrow concepts of sanctuary, and beyond barriers between communities that have much at stake and so much in common," The Majority states on its BeyondtheMoment.orgwebsite, which officially launches Monday.
"We will strike, rally and resist," the coalition, which includes the Black Lives Matter Global Network, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change and Mi Gente, among others, wrote on its website.
Leading up to Donald Trump's inauguration, many U.S. activist groups worked in silos on strategies to resist the conservative political agenda that they agree is an existential threat to women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants and the environment. Trump's first 100 days in office had been chocked full of executive orders, budgets and legislative proposals that go directly against what these activists have long been fighting for. 
"Even though the election results showed one thing, the reality is that the majority of us are under attack and this is a moment for us to step into something together," Navina Khanna, director of the Health, Environment, Agriculture, and Labor Food Alliance in Oakland, California, said in a phone interview. HEAL is a part of The Majority. "This is about really learning to see our issues as one, and our struggles as one."
The "Beyond the Moment" initiative kicks off April 4 with "serious political education with our bases," according to the website. In the weeks leading up to the mass mobilizations on May 1, they will hold public teach-ins and workshops nationwide. The desired outcome is a "broad intersectional, cross-sectoral" and influential unity on the left, activists said.
The idea for Beyond the Moment was derived from the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech, in which he spoke out against racism, materialism and militarism — all broader and more-inclusive themes than his earlier anti-Jim Crow campaigns. The coalition said it chose April 4 as the kickoff for political education because that is date that King delivered the speech in 1967 and the date on which he was assassinated a year later.
Although anti-Trumpism has been a unifying cause — protests in major U.S. cities have occurred almost weekly around the Trump administration's Muslim travel ban, Standing Rock policies and transgender rights rollback — The Majority said it wants supporters to think beyond this president.
"In the context of a new president using grandiose promises of job creation to mask the fundamentally anti-worker and pro-corporation nature of his policies, it is as important as ever that we put forth a true vision of economic justice, and worker justice, for all people," the coalition website states.

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Please forward widely…  Honoring Our Heroes & Martyrs: Lynne Stewart & Mumia Abu-Jamal May 6-7




Honoring our Heroes and Martyrs...
Celebrating the Life of People's Attorney  Lynne Stewart
Renewing the Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal*
with...
so Ralph Poynter, lifelong companion of Lynne Stewart; co-founder New Abolitionist Movement; Black community activist 
so Mumia Abu-Jamal via Skype
so Judy Ritter, Professor of law; Co-counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal with NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund 
o Boots Riley of The Coup
so Cat Brooks, SF Bay Area National Lawyers Guild Interim Director; founder, Anti-police Terror Project and Bay Area Black Lives Matter
Special remarks from...
so Steve Bingham, Former President, SF Bay Area National Lawyers Guild,  recipient of the NLG's Champion of Justice Award 
 s Cindy Sheehan, Activist/Author/Host of Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox
so Jeff Mackler, Director, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; founder, West Coast Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
so Ralph Schoenman, Former Secretary to Bertrand Russel; Executive Director, Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal; Lynne Stewart defense organizer
s Dennis Bernstein, Host, KPFA's Flashpoints
Greetings from local social justice and prison rights activists  o Kim Serrano/Speak Out Now!;  o Judy Greenspan/Workers World Party and so Carol Seligman/Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
In San Francisco: Saturday, May 6, 7 pm, Eric Quesada Political and Cultural Center, 518 Valencia Street,  (near 16th Street BART)

In Oakland: Sunday, May 7, 7 pm, Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. (between Broadway &  Telegraph)
Sponsors: Lynne Stewart Organization & Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal 
Initial Co-sponsors/endorsers: Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox • Lynne Stewart Defense Committee • Socialist Action • Speak Out Now! • Workers World Party • Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal • United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)  
Donation $20 - $10 sliding scale No one turned away for lack of funds. Benefit for Lynne Stewart Organization
For information about tables at $25 each contact: jmackler@lmi.net  510-268-9429
If you can't make these meetings, to help cover Lynne's family expenses, please send your contribution payable to Lynne Stewart Organization to POB 10328, Oakland, CA 94610
*Based of the 2016 Williams v. Pennsylvania U.S. Supreme Court decision Mumia's legal team is filing in Philadelphia on April 24 a petition for a new trial. The Williams decision held that in death penalty cases a state prosecutor, who is later appointed to a state court cannot rule on a decision that she/he was previously a party to. In Mumia's case, state prosecutor Ron Castille, who later became a PA Supreme Court judge, refused to recuse himself on Mumia's appeal.
s = SF meeting only
o = Oakland meeting only

so = both meetings

SAVE THE DATE, FROM SUZANNE ROSS: 

Be in Philadelphia on Monday, April 24th, Mumia's birthday, when a major legal issue will be addressed in the Court of Common Pleas (Pennsylvania State Court) challenging the entire process of conviction that took place during the State Appeals process from 1995 to 1998.  We are simultaneously addressing Mumia's Hep C Condition, the water crisis in Pennsylvania prisons, including Mahanoy where Mumia is housed, and the current major challenge to Mumia's conviction.  These issues affect thousands of other inmates in Pennsylvania.  Collective travel information is being planned and will be disseminated within the next few days.

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SF BAY AREA
EVENTS

BERKELEY CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS AND WAR RESISTERS’ DAY EVENT

On International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, Celebrate the 11th Annual
11:30 A.M. Monday, May 15, 2017
  • Sponsored by City of Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission
  • Endorsed by War Resisters League-West and Courage to Resist
Peace Flag raising ceremony, first at Civic Center flagpole at 2180 Milvia Street, corner of Allston Way and then at the flagpole at MLK, Jr. Civic Center Park, 2151 MLK, Jr. Way (between Center Street and Allston Way, across from Old City Hall), Berkeley Read more
Also:
This evening...
Free showing of the drone documentary "National Bird"
Friday, April 28, 7:45px at the Proxy outdoor movie theater
432 Octavia Blvd., at Hayes Street, San Francisco
This weekend...
Dr. King's Speech on Viet Nam War of April 4, 1967 - Full Reading
Sunday, April 30, 2 pm at Yerba Buena Gardens
Mission Street, between 3rd and 4th Streets
Presented by Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69, San Francisco

WEBSITE REDESIGN, RELAUNCH
website redesign

We’ve completely redesigned, and relaunched, our website for a great reading experience on either desktop or mobile. 

MAY 2017 PDF NEWSLETTER
pdf newsletter

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559
www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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Mumia's Hep C Treatment Has Begun!


Joe Piette: 610-931-2615


Join us in Philadelphia on Monday, April 24, 2017 at 8:30AM, at the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas to assert Mumia's innocence and call for his immediate release.

Center for Criminal Justice
Courtroom 1101
1303 Filbert Street
Philadephia, PA

Signers in solidarity,

International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
MOVE
Campaign to Bring Mumia Home
Abolitionist Law Center
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)
Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal
Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mundo Obrero/Workers World
Philly REAL Justice
Prison Radio
Sankofa Community Empowerment
Millions for Mumia/International Action Center
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal/Northern California
Le Collectif Français "Libérons Mumia"
German Network Against the Death Penalty and to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Amig@s de Mumia de México

Saint-Denis Free Mumia Committee

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Support:




CONTRIBUTE 
Thank you for being a part of this struggle.

Cuando luchamos ganamos! When we fight we win!

Noelle Hanrahan, Director
Facebook
Twitter
Website
To give by check: 
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141

Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222

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Former Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera who recently received a commutation of his sentence  from President Obama will be coming to the Bay Area on Wednesday, May 31st.  This will be a memorable event, not to be missed!



Welcome Oscar Lopez Rivera 

  Oscar is Free and Coming to the Bay Area May 31st
                                                                       
            
           Oscar Lopez Rivera is coming to the Bay Area after 36 years in prison for his struggle in support for independence and sovereignty for Puerto Rican Independence. Help us support Oscar as he continues his work by making a financial commitment as he begins his new life.

            He will be visiting the Bay Area for a unique one time only public appearance on May 31st. For many of us, this is a welcome opportunity to celebrate his release and our shared victory. Let us show our support for Oscar in his new endeavors.

Please make a generous donation now: https://www.gofundme.com/welcomeoscar

Let us show Oscar that the SF Bay Area community supports him as he continues to advocate for sovereignty and independence for Puerto Rico. We look forward to seeing you in May.

Save the date: Wed. May 31, 2017  
                                 Recepcion 5pm
                                 Program 7pm - Place still to be determined 
For more information: freeoscarnow@gmail.com www.facebook.com/WelcomeOscartotheBayArea

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Solidarity with the Jacksonville Five! Donate for bail and defense! 
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression (stopfbi.net)

Solidarity with the Jacksonville Five!
Donate for bail and defense!

Please donate to the Jacksonville Five bail and defense fund!

Call State Attorney Melissa Nelson at
904-255-2500 and say, "Drop the charges against the Jacksonville Five!"


April 13, 2017 - The Jacksonville Five are a group of anti-war protesters in Florida beaten and arrested by police at a "No War in Syria" rally held on Friday April 7, 2017. A right-wing provocateur appeared with a Trump flag, and then harassed and shoved anti-war activists, while police did nothing to him. Then the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office (JSO) physically attacked the anti-war protesters who did nothing wrong.

The police descended upon Connell Crooms, a deaf African American man, who had been leading chants. The police savagely beat, kicked and tased Crooms until he was unconscious and had to be taken to the hospital. Crooms is a well-known Teamster and a Black Lives Matter leader.

The police also punched Vietnam veteran Willie Wilder in the face and arrested the 74-year-old peace activist. Christina Kittle, the leader of the Jacksonville Coalition for Consent was thrown to the ground and arrested. Transgender activist Toma Beckwith was also tackled and arrested.

As protesters were leaving the park to do jail support, the police arrested union activist and anti-war speaker Dave Schneider, charging him with "felony inciting a riot" for organizing the anti-war protest. Police never arrested the right-wing provocateur. In fact, there are many photos on social media of him posing with JSO police, including Sheriff Mike Williams.

Jacksonville quickly rallied to the defense of the Jacksonville Five. The next day, April 8, over 200 people rallied to demand all charges be dropped. Leaders of the labor, African American, and progressive movements chanted, "Drop the charges!" The mother of Connell Crooms gave a tearful testament to her son's good character and denounced the police attack on her son, "JSO should not be allowed to get away with this type of behavior."

The rally demanded a full independent investigation into the police misconduct of April 7. Protesters are also demanding an independent investigation into a police spying program. Just weeks earlier the Florida Times Union newspaper reported the Sheriff's Office was spying on activists, including the Jacksonville Five, with photos of Dave Schneider, Connell Crooms and Christina Kittle appearing.

Jacksonville Sheriffs are lying and denying, claiming the protesters "incited a riot." Fortunately, dozens of people took video of the police brutality. The social media pages of the provocateur contain ties to white supremacist groups and to Sheriff Mike Williams who denies he knows him, despite their photo together at a Trump rally.

To add insult to injury, the total bail amount issued by the court for all five arrestees came out to over $157,000. They are outrageously charging the people who were beaten and arrested by the police with serious felony charges. We need to mobilize national support and raise enough money to cover this and pay for the defense.

There is a continuing campaign to drop the trumped-up charges and investigate the abuses by the JSO.

Please call the State Attorney for the Florida 4th Circuit, Melissa Nelson at 904-255-2500, and demand she drop the charges against the Jax5.

Please share this link to donate to the Jacksonville Five legal defense fund:

http://tinyurl.com/DefendJax5

Copyright © 2017 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN  55414

Add us to your address book

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Please call to support Siddique Abdullah Hasan on hunger strike!

Call Director Gary Mohr at 614-387-0588 or email him at drc.publicinfo@odrc.state.oh.us as well as Northeast Regional Director Todd Ishee, 330-797-6398. 

Demand that the punishments being imposed on Jason Robb and Siddique Abdullah Hasan be reversed and that OSP authorities be severely reprimanded for violating their rights to due process and displaying bias toward them. 

Details and backstory (share this with media contacts, please):

Contact for interviews:

Staughton and Alice Lynd: salynd@aol.com, 330-652-9635


Prison Strike Leader Moved to Infirmary after Twenty Four Days Refusing Food.

Siddique Abdullah Hasan, a national prisoner leader has been on hunger strike since Monday, February 27th. On Friday, March 24th he was moved to the infirmary, presumably due to failing health. His appeal to the Rules Infraction Board (RIB) was also denied by Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) Director Gary Mohr.

The administration at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) has been targeting and restricting Hasan's communication access on any pretense they can find or invent since his outspoken support for the nation-wide prisoner strike on September 9th of 2016.

Hasan and another prisoner, Jason Robb began refusing food when the OSP administration put them on a 90 day communication restriction for being interviewed by the Netflix documentary series Captives. Hasan appealed the RIB's decision, arguing that they violated policies regarding timelines, access to witnesses, and prisoners' due process rights. Director Mohr's response to the appeal was a form letter that did not address any of the issues Hasan raised.

Hasan and Robb are on death row and have been held in solitary confinement since the 1993 prison uprising in Lucasville. They believe that the ODRC and the Ohio State prosecutors targeted them after the uprising because of their role in negotiating a peaceful surrender. State officials, in both the Captives documentary and a 2013 documentary called The Shadow of Lucasville, have admitted that some prisoners were given deals to testify against Hasan, Robb and others, and that no one really knows who committed the most serious crimes during the uprising. In court, they argued the opposite to secure death penalty convictions.

The Lucasville Uprising prisoners have been fighting to tell their story for decades, and are currently suing the ODRC over an unconstitutional media blockade, which the Captives documentary crew circumvented by unofficially recording video visits with Hasan and Robb. The current hunger strike is part of an ongoing struggle for equal protection, basic human rights and survival after decades of living under the most restrictive and torturous conditions of confinement at OSP, Ohio's supermax prison.

Supporters are asking people to please call Director Gary Mohr at 614-387-0588 or email him at drc.publicinfo@odrc.state.oh.us as well as Northeast Regional Director Todd Ishee, 330-797-6398. Demand that the punishments being imposed on Jason Robb and Siddique Abdullah Hasan be reversed and that OSP authorities be severely reprimanded for violating their rights to due process and displaying bias toward them.

For more information on the Lucasville Uprising, the struggles of these prisoners, and the media blockade against them, please visit LucasvilleAmnesty.org.

Hasan's Conduct Report and appeal: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxez-nYn2VrpVTVESENUZENnaVU/view?usp=sharing

Gary Mohr's form letter response: https://drive.google.com/a/lucasvilleamnesty.org/file/d/0B9q-BEqATW6TeHVUUHM1ZVF5bnc/view?usp=sharing

Feb 28th announcement of hunger strike: http://www.lucasvilleamnesty.org/2017/02/uprising-prisoners-censored-respond.html

Info about the lawsuit against media blockade: http://www.lucasvilleamnesty.org/2014/04/aclu-articles-on-lucasville.html

Articles about Hasan's involvement with the September 9th prison strike: http://www.lucasvilleamnesty.org/search/label/strike%20september%209th

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100,000 protest in San Francisco, CA

Pictures From Women's
Marches on Every Continent

Crowds in hundreds of cities around the world gathered Saturday
in conjunction with the Women's March on Washington.  JAN. 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/21/world/womens-march-pictures.html


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Dear Friend,

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) is now in Contempt of Court

On January 3, 2017, Federal District Court Judge Robert Mariani ordered the DOC to treat Mumia with the hepatitis C cure within 21 days.

But on January 7, prison officials formally denied Mumia's grievances asking for the cure. This is after being informed twice by the court that denying treatment is unconstitutional.

John Wetzel, Secretary of the PA DOC, is refusing to implement the January 3rd Federal Court Order requiring the DOC to treat Mumia within 21 days. Their time has run out to provide Mumia with hepatitis C cure!

Mumia is just one of over 6,000 incarcerated people in the PA DOC at risk with active and chronic Hepatitis C. Left untreated, 7-9% of people infected with chronic hep C get liver cancer every year.  

We need your help to force the DOC to stop its cruel and unusual punishment of over 6,000 people in prison with chronic hepatitis C. Click here for a listing of numbers to call today!


Water Crisis in the Prison


Drinking water remains severely contaminated at the prison in which Mumia and 2,500 others are held, SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA. Mumia filed a grievance regarding the undrinkable water: read it here.

We are asking you to call the prison now to demand clean drinking water and hepatitis C treatment now! 

Protest Drinking Water Contamination Rally
When: From 4-6pm on Thursday, Feb 9
Where: Governor's Office- 200 South Broad St, Philadelphia
We're sending our mailing to you, including this brilliant poster by incarcerated artist Kevin Rashid Johnson. Keep an eye out it next week!
Cuando luchamos ganamos! When we fight, we win!

Noelle Hanrahan, Director

About the recently appealed Court victory:

On January 3rd, a federal court granted Mumia Abu-Jamal's petition for immediate and effective treatment for his Hepatitis-C infection, which has hitherto been denied him. The judge struck down Pennsylvania's protocols as "deliberate indifference to serious medical need."

This is a rare and important win for innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in a court system that has routinely subjected him to the "Mumia exception," i.e., a refusal of justice despite court precedents in his favor. Thousands of Hep-C-infected prisoners throughout Pennsylvania and the US stand to benefit from this decision, provided it is upheld. 

But, it is up to us to make sure that this decision is not over-turned on appeal--something the State of Pennsylvania will most likely seek.

Hundreds demonstrated in both Philadelphia and Oakland on December 9th to demand both this Hep-C treatment for prisoners, and "Free Mumia Now!" In Oakland, the December 9th Free Mumia Coalition rallied in downtown and then marched on the OPD headquarters. The Coalition brought over two dozen groups together to reignite the movement to free Mumia; and now we need your support to expand and build for more actions in this new, and likely very dangerous year for political prisoners. 


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Protect Kevin "Rashid" Johnson from Prison Repression!

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

WHEN: Anytime
WHAT: Protect imprisoned activist-journalist Kevin "Rashid" Johnson
FACEBOOK EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/1794902884117144/


On December 21, 2016, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson was the victim of an
assault by guards at the Clements Unit where he is currently being held,
just outside Amarillo, Texas. Rashid was sprayed with OC pepper gas
while handcuffed in his cell, and then left in the contaminated cell for
hours with no possibility to shower and no access to fresh air. It was
in fact days before he was supplied with new sheets or clothes (his bed
was covered with the toxic OC residue), and to this day his cell has not
been properly decontaminated.

This assault came on the heels of another serious move against Rashid,
as guards followed up on threats to confiscate all of his property – not
only files required for legal matters, but also art supplies, cups to
drink water out of, and food he had recently purchased from the
commissary. The guards in question were working under the direction of
Captain Patricia Flowers, who had previously told Rashid that she
intended to seize all of his personal belongings as retaliation for his
writings about mistreatment of prisoners, up to and including assaults
and purposeful medical negligence that have led to numerous deaths in
custody. Specifically, Rashid's writings have called attention to the
deaths of Christopher Woolverton, Joseph Comeaux, and Alton Rodgers, and
he has been contacted by lawyers litigating on behalf of the families of
at least two of these men.

As a journalist and activist literally embedded within the bowels of the
world's largest prison system, Rashid relies on his files and notes for
correspondence, legal matters, and his various news reports.
Furthermore, Rashid is a self-taught artist of considerable talent (his
work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and books);
needless to say, the guards were also instructed to seize his art
materials and the drawings he was working on.

(For a more complete description of Rashid's ordeal on and following
December 21, see his recent article "Bound and Gassed: My Reward for
Exposing Abuses and Killings of Texas Prisoners" at
http://rashidmod.com/?p=2321)

Particularly worrisome, is the fact that the abuse currently directed
against Rashid is almost a carbon-copy of what was directed against
Joseph Comeaux in 2013, who was eventually even denied urgently needed
medical care. Comeaux died shortly thereafter.

This is the time to step up and take action to protect Rashid; and the
only protection we can provide, from the outside, is to make sure prison
authorities know that we are watching. Whether you have read his
articles about prison conditions, his political or philosophical
polemics (and whether you agreed with him or not!), or just appreciate
his artwork – even if this is the first you are hearing about Rashid –
we need you to step up and make a few phone calls and send some emails.
When doing so, let officials know you are contacting them about Kevin
Johnson, ID #1859887, and the incident in which he was gassed and his
property confiscated on December 21, 2016. The officials to contact are:

Warden Kevin Foley
Clements Unit
telephone: (806) 381-7080 (you will reach the general switchboard; ask
to speak to the warden's office)

Tell Warden Foley that you have heard of the gas attack on Rashid.
Specific demands you can make:

* That Kevin Johnson's property be returned to him

* That Kevin Johnson's cell be thoroughly decontaminated

* That Captain Patricia Flowers, Lieutenant Crystal Turner, Lieutenant
Arleen Waak, and Corrections Officer Andrew Leonard be sanctioned for
targeting Kevin Johnson for retaliation for his writings

* That measures be taken to ensure that whistleblowers amongst staff and
the prisoner population not be targeted for any reprisals from guards or
other authorities. (This is important because at least one guard and
several prisoners have signed statements asserting that Rashid was left
in his gassed cell for hours, and that his property should not have been
seized.)

Try to be polite, while expressing how concerned you are for Kevin
Johnson's safety. You will almost certainly be told that because other
people have already called and there is an ongoing investigation – or
else, because you are not a member of his family -- that you cannot be
given any information. Say that you understand, but that you still wish
to have your concerns noted, and that you want the prison to know that
you will be keeping track of what happens to Mr Johnson.

The following other authorities should also be contacted. These bodies
may claim they are unable to directly intervene, however we know that by
creating a situation where they are receiving complaints, they will
eventually contact other authorities who can intervene to see what the
fuss is all about. So it's important to get on their cases too:

TDCJ Ombudsman: ombudsman@tdcj.texas.gov

The Inspector General:  512-671-2480

Let these "watchdogs" know you are concerned that Kevin Johnson #1859887
was the victim of a gas attack in Clements Unit on December 21, 2016.
Numerous witnesses have signed statements confirming that he was
handcuffed, in his cell, and not threatening anyone at the time he was
gassed. Furthermore, he was not allowed to shower for hours, and his
cell was never properly decontaminated, so that he was still suffering
the effects of the gas days later. It is also essential to mention that
his property was improperly confiscated, and that he had previously been
threatened with having this happen as retaliation for his writing about
prison conditions. Kevin Johnson's property must be returned!

Finally, complaints should also be directed to the director of the VA
DOC Harold Clarke and the VA DOC's Interstate Compact Supervisor, Terry
Glenn. This is because Rashid is in fact a Virginia prisoner, who has
been exiled from Virginia under something called the Interstate Compact,
which is used by some states as a way to be rid of activist prisoners,
while at the same time separating them from their families and
supporters. Please contact:

VADOC Director, Harold Clarke
804-887-8081
Director.Clarke@vadoc.virginia.gov

Interstate Compact director, Terry Glenn
804-887-7866

Let them know that you are phoning about Kevin Johnson, a Virginia
prisoner who has been sent to Texas under the Interstate Compact. His
Texas ID # is 1859887 however his Virginia ID # is 1007485. Inform them
that Mr Johnson has been gassed by guards and has had his property
seized as retaliation for his writing about prison conditions. These are
serious legal and human rights violations, and even though they occurred
in Texas, the Virginia Department of Corrections is responsible as Mr
Johnson is a Virginia prisoner. Despite the fact that they may ask you
who you are, and how you know about this, and for your contact
information, they will likely simply conclude by saying that they will
not be getting back to you. Nonetheless, it is worth urging them to
contact Texas officials about this matter.

It is good to call whenever you are able. However, in order to maximize
our impact, for those who can, we are suggesting that people make their
phone calls on Thursday, January 5.

And at the same time, please take a moment to sign the online petition
to support Rashid, up at the Roots Action website:
https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/prison-activist-gassed-in-clements-unit-prison-texas-law-enforcement-is-violently-out-of-control

Rashid has taken considerable risks in reporting on the abuse he
witnesses at the Clements Unit, just as he has at other prisons. Indeed,
he has continued to report on the violence and medical neglect to which
prisoners are subjected, despite threats from prison staff. If we, as a
movement, are serious about working to resist and eventually abolish the
U.S. prison system, we must do all we can to assist and protect those
like Rashid who take it upon themselves to stand up and speak out. As
Ojore Lutalo once put it, "Any movement that does not support their
political internees ... is a sham movement."

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To learn more about Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, the abuses in the Texas
prison system, as well as his work in founding and leading the New
Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, see his website
athttp://www.rashidmod.com


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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson featuring exchanges with an Outlaw Kindle Edition

by Kevin Rashid Johnson (Author), Tom Big Warrior (Introduction), Russell Maroon Shoatz(Introduction)

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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RU5M4S



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

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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Major Battles On
For over 31 years, Major Tillery has been a prisoner of the State.
Despite that extraordinary fact, he continues his battles, both in the prison for his health, and in the courts for his freedom.
Several weeks ago, Tillery filed a direct challenge to his criminal conviction, by arguing that a so-called "secret witness" was, in fact, a paid police informant who was given a get-out-of-jail-free card if he testified against Tillery.
Remember I mentioned, "paid?"
Well, yes--the witness was 'paid'--but not in dollars. He was paid in sex!
In the spring of 1984, Robert Mickens was facing decades in prison on rape and robbery charges. After he testified against Tillery, however, his 25-year sentence became 5 years: probation!
And before he testified he was given an hour and a ½ private visit with his girlfriend--at the Homicide Squad room at the Police Roundhouse. (Another such witness was given another sweetheart deal--lie on Major, and get off!)
To a prisoner, some things are more important than money. Like sex!
In a verified document written in April, 2016, Mickens declares that he lied at trial, after being coached by the DAs and detectives on the case.
He lied to get out of jail--and because he could get with his girl.
Other men have done more for less.
Major's 58-page Petition is a time machine back into a practice that was once common in Philadelphia.
In the 1980s and '90s, the Police Roundhouse had become a whorehouse.
Major, now facing serious health challenges from his hepatitis C infection, stubborn skin rashes, and dangerous intestinal disorders, is still battling.
And the fight ain't over.
[©'16 MAJ  6/29/16]
Major Tillery Needs Your Help and Support
Major Tillery is an innocent man. There was no evidence against Major Tillery for the 1976 poolroom shootings that left one man dead and another wounded. The surviving victim gave a statement to homicide detectives naming others—not Tillery or his co-defendant—as the shooters. Major wasn't charged until 1980, he was tried in 1985.
The only evidence at trial came from these jailhouse informants who were given sexual favors and plea deals for dozens of pending felonies for lying against Major Tillery. Both witnesses now declare their testimony was manufactured by the police and prosecution. Neither witness had personal knowledge of the shooting.
This is a case of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption that goes to the deepest levels of rot in the Philadelphia criminal injustice system. Major Tillery deserves not just a new trial, but dismissal of the charges against him and his freedom from prison.
It cost a lot of money for Major Tillery to be able to file his new pro se PCRA petition and continue investigation to get more evidence of the state misconduct. He needs help to get lawyers to make sure this case is not ignored. Please contribute, now.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
    Financial Support: Tillery's investigation is ongoing, to get this case filed has been costly and he needs funds for a legal team to fight this to his freedom!
    Go to JPay.com;
    code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC
    Tell Philadelphia District Attorney
    Seth Williams:
    Free Major Tillery! He is an innocent man, framed by police and and prosecution.
    Call: 215-686-8711 or

    Write to:
    Major Tillery AM9786
    SCI Frackville
    1111 Altamont Blvd.
    Frackville, PA 17931

      For More Information, Go To: Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot
      Call/Write:
      Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq. (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com





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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: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up - from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org

        Kevin Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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        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


        Updates from Team Lorenzo Johnson

        Dear Supporters and Friends,


        Show your support for Lorenzo by wearing one of our beautiful new campaign t-shirts! If you donate $20 (or more!) to the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson, we will send you a t-shirt, while supplies last. Make sure to note your size and shipping address in the comment section on PayPal, or to include this information with a check.




        Here is a message from Lorenzo's wife, Tazza Salvatto:


        My husband is innocent, FREE HIM NOW!
        Lorenzo Johnson is a son, husband, father and brother. His injustice has been a continued nightmare for our family. Words cant explain our constant pain, I wish it on no one. Not even the people responsible for his injustice. 
        This is about an innocent man who has spent 20 years and counting in prison. The sad thing is Lorenzo's prosecution knew he was innocent from day one. These are the same people society relies on to protect us.

        Not only have these prosecutors withheld evidence of my husbands innocence by NEVER turning over crucial evidence to his defense prior to trial. Now that Lorenzo's innocence has been revealed, the prosecution refuses to do the right thing. Instead they are "slow walking" his appeal and continuing their malicious prosecution.
        When my husband or our family speak out about his injustice, he's labeled by his prosecutor as defaming a career cop and prosecutor. If they are responsible for Lorenzo's wrongful conviction, why keep it a secret??? This type of corruption and bullying of families of innocent prisoners to remain silent will not be tolerated.
        Our family is not looking for any form of leniency. Lorenzo is innocent, we want what is owed to him. JUSTICE AND HIS IMMEDIATE FREEDOM!!! 

                                  Lorenzo's wife,
                                   Tazza Salvatto
        Lorenzo is continuing to fight for his freedom with the support of his lead counsel, Michael Wiseman, The Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, and the Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson.
        Thank you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit our website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!
        Write: Lorenzo Johnson
                    DF 1036
                    SCI Mahanoy
                    301 Morea Rd.
                    Frackville, PA 17932
         Email: Through JPay using the code:
                      Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
                                              or
                      Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com
                                             or
                      Directly on ConnectNetwork -- instructions here

        Have a wonderful day!
        - The Team 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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        B. ARTICLES IN FULL


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        1)  George Takei: Internment, America's Great Mistake
        By GEORGE TAKEI APRIL 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/george-takei-japanese-internment-
        americas-great-mistake.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=
        story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-
        region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0




        2)  The Birth of 'Vietnamization'
        [Not a word here about how many Vietnamese were murdered?....BW]
        By Stephen B. Young, April 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/the-birth-of-vietnamization.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region




        3)  Climate March Draws Thousands of Protesters Alarmed by Trump’s Environmental Agenda
        By NICHOLAS FANDOS
        4)  Brazil Gripped by General Strike Over Austerity Measures
        By SIMON ROMERO
        5)  Marines Return to Helmand Province for a Job They Thought Was Done
        By MUJIB MASHAL
        hought-was-done.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=
        world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront




        6)  Arkansas Governor Rebuffs Calls for Execution Inquiry
        By ALAN BLINDER
        7)  Too Scared to Report Sexual Abuse. The Fear: Deportation.
        By JENNIFER MEDINA
        8)  Judge in Houston Strikes Down Harris County’s Bail System
        By ELI ROSENBERG
        9)  Family by Family, How School Segregation Still Happens
        By KATE TAYLOR
        10)  Most New York City Schools Had High Lead Levels, Retests Find
        By KATE TAYLOR
























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        1)  George Takei: Internment, America's Great Mistake
        By GEORGE TAKEI APRIL 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/george-takei-japanese-internment-
        americas-great-mistake.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=
        story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-
        region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0

        Every year since the late 1960s, on the last Saturday in April, there has been a pilgrimage to a place called Manzanar in California, where one of 10 United States internment camps once stood. The annual journeys began as a way to remember those Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during World War II and to mark a dark chapter in our history. The pilgrimage includes elderly original internees and their families, as well as neighbors of the site, schoolchildren and, since Sept. 11, American Muslims, who see parallels between what once happened and today.
        Manzanar is the best known of the camps, because it often made the news during the war owing to unrest, strikes and even shooting deaths. At its peak, the camp held over 10,000 Japanese-Americans inside its barbed wire. Most hailed from Los Angeles, some 230 miles to the south. A vast majority were also American citizens, held without charge or trial for years, for the crime of looking like the people who had bombed Pearl Harbor.
        Manzanar is now a National Historic Site thanks to the work of Sue Kunitomi Embrey and the Manzanar Committee, which lobbied for decades to obtain the designation. I have visited it often, but my personal pilgrimages have been to two other camps that once held my family and me. One is in Rohwer, Ark., in what was then fetid, uninhabitable swampland, and the other is in the cold, desolate wastes of Tule Lake, Calif. That was the harshest camp, with more than 18,500 inmates behind three layers of barbed-wire fence and with tanks patrolling the perimeter.
        I was 5 years old at the beginning of our internment in Arkansas. I remember every school morning reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, my eyes upon the stars and stripes of the flag, but at the same time I could see from the window the barbed wire and the sentry towers where guards kept guns trained on us.

        I was 7 years old when we were transferred to another camp for "disloyals." My mother and father's only crime was refusing, out of principle, to sign a loyalty pledge promulgated by the government. The authorities had already taken my parents' home on Garnet Street in Los Angeles, their once thriving dry cleaning business, and finally their liberty. Now they wanted them to grovel; this was an indignity too far.
        A pilgrimage to Tule Lake also occurs every year, symbolically on July 4. I have gone three times. I remember a terrifying moment while I was held there when armed military police burst into the barracks and hauled away several young men.
        On the pilgrimages, I finally saw where they had been taken: a concrete cell block called the stockade. On the concrete walls, there was graffiti, now made illegible by the passage of time. Also fading were brown splotches I was told were blood stains. This was what could happen in an America that had become un-American.
        It has been the lifelong mission of many to ensure we remember the internment. Our oft-repeated plea is simple: We must understand and honor the past in order to learn from and not repeat it. But in the 75 years since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment of Japanese-Americans, never have we been more anxious that this mission might fail.
        It is imperative, in today's toxic political environment, to acknowledge a hard truth: The horror of the internment lay in the racial animus the government itself propagated. It whipped up hatred and fear toward an entire group of people based solely on our ancestry.
        Officials claimed they could not distinguish among us to determine who were "spies" and "saboteurs" and who were innocents. Yet not a single instance of espionage or sabotage was ever prosecuted or proved among the 120,000 internees. It was the ultimate in "fake news," encouraged by a vicious, jingoistic press and politicians seeking to capitalize on the national hysteria.
        If this seems a practice only of years long past, consider that today we need merely replace "Japanese-Americans" with "Muslims" for the parallels to emerge. Once again, we are told by our government that a blanket ban is needed. So brazen is this same troubling logic that a Trump surrogate even cited Japanese-American internment as a precedent for the Muslim ban. Both rely upon the presupposition of guilt, one by race, the other by religion. Most chilling of all, both arise out of government policy and action.
        When nations make historic mistakes, atonement may never truly come. It took almost 50 years for the United States to apologize to those it had interned. While modest reparations were eventually paid, it was far from enough to restore what had been so unjustly taken. My father, who bore our family's anguish at the imprisonment hardest, died nine years before President Ronald Reagan's 1988 apology, never to know of the government's belated acknowledgment of the pain it had caused. To this day, the Supreme Court has not overruled its infamous Korematsu opinion of 1944, which validated our mass incarceration in deference to national security.
        My way of remembering the cruelties of the past was to help found the Japanese American National Museum, as well as to turn my family's experience into a Broadway show, "Allegiance," in the hope that more will heed the warning. The pilgrimages to camps like Manzanar, Rohwer and Tule Lake are another way of honoring those who suffered, and lost, and had to rebuild shattered lives. They remind us all today of the threat to American values from cynically manufactured fear and the deliberate targeting of a vulnerable minority.
        George Takei, an actor and author, is appearing off Broadway in "Pacific Overtures." He is on Twitter (@GeorgeTakei).



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        2)  The Birth of 'Vietnamization'
        [Not a word here about how many Vietnamese were murdered?....BW]
        By Stephen B. Young, April 28, 2017
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/the-birth-of-vietnamization.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

        On Oct. 14, 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who had been principally responsible for waging war against the Communists in South Vietnam, threw in the towel. A little over a year before he officially resigned as secretary, he sent a long memorandum to President Lyndon Johnson, artfully admitting that he and his Pentagon had no strategy to end the war on favorable terms for the South Vietnamese.
        Johnson quickly turned to others for a new approach. A month after McNamara's memo, the president asked two aides — Walt Rostow, his national security adviser, and Robert Komer, a National Security Council staff member — to come up with something more effective than McNamara's tactics of attrition and bombing. Their recommendation, delivered on Dec. 13, 1966, was to "complement our anti-main force campaign and bombing offensive with greatly increased efforts to pacify the countryside and increase the attractive power" of the government of Vietnam. Long before the term became a household word, "Vietnamization" was born.
        To put the plan into effect, Johnson chose three men: Ellsworth Bunker to be ambassador in Saigon; Komer to lead a new counterinsurgency organization; and Gen. Creighton Abrams to build up South Vietnam's military capacity to defeat invading North Vietnamese regulars.
        Bunker was to work with the Vietnamese leadership and ensure coordination of all efforts — civil and military, American and Vietnamese nationalist. Komer and Abrams were to be deputies to Gen. William Westmoreland at his headquarters on the outskirts of Saigon.
        But it was Bunker whose role Johnson considered most pivotal. It was about more than being America's top diplomat in South Vietnam. It was about getting America out of the war. "I had gotten him out of the Dominican Republic and accomplished his political objective there," he told me in an interview. "He wanted me to do the same in South Vietnam."
        In a private meeting where no notes were taken, Johnson told Bunker that he wanted to begin withdrawing American troops from Vietnam. But before those forces could leave, a better, stronger South Vietnamese army had to take over more responsibility for search and destroy missions to keep Hanoi's battalions up in the mountains and close to the borders, far away from the civilian population.
        Simultaneously, Johnson wanted the South Vietnamese to accelerate democratic development, taking into their hands full responsibility for the political destiny of South Vietnam. In short, Johnson wanted the American role in Vietnam diminished at a speed corresponding to the emergence of South Vietnamese self-reliance.
        Johnson and his new Saigon leadership team organized a meeting in Guam on March 20, 1967, with South Vietnam's chief administrators, Generals Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky. They presented him with a new constitution for South Vietnam, one calling for checks and balances and decentralization of power to elected local councils in provinces and villages.
        President Johnson played down the meeting's importance; he stressed in public that the conference was not devoted to military aspects of the war effort, saying only that "I think we have a difficult, serious, long, drawn-out, agonizing problem that we do not yet have the answer for." But there was no mistaking the significance of the Guam conference. Johnson used it to establish a new set of metrics by which to measure success in the war effort: Nation building was in, warfighting was out.
        Two days before the Guam meeting, General Westmoreland had asked for an increase of 85,000 combat troops in order to intensify field operations to "avoid an unreasonable protracted war." At Guam, Westmoreland defended his request for more troops. Bunker watched Johnson react to Westmoreland's briefing. The president's mood and countenance revealed no pleasure in listening to Westmoreland's grim analysis, which largely confirmed McNamara's earlier judgment that the Pentagon strategy of high-intensity warfare could not force Hanoi to cease its aggression.
        Indeed, Johnson had already turned against adding troops. When Westmoreland traveled to Washington a month later to pitch the troop increase again, the president replied: "When we add divisions, can't the enemy add divisions? If so, where does it all end?" Several months later Johnson threw Westmoreland a bone, adding 45,000 combat troops, about half of what he requested.
        Bunker arrived in Saigon in late April 1967, where he made clear that Washington's approach had changed. It would no longer to be a "hard power" war fought primarily by American combat units in South Vietnam supplemented by American bombing of North Vietnam, with everything else waiting on the outcome of that armed struggle. Instead, he told Thieu on April 28, the "essence of success" would be found in bringing security to all the hamlets and villages across the countryside.
        Bunker set himself four main tasks: convincing South Vietnam's leadership of the need to build a legitimate government reflecting the country's various political forces; executing a pacification program to bring peace and order to rural villages; preparing South Vietnam's army to take over the burden of direct ground combat with Communist forces; and promoting economic development to improve living conditions and raise funds to finance the struggle against North Vietnam.
        In other words, Ellsworth's goal was to shift from the United States to the South Vietnamese the burden of sustaining South Vietnam as a viable independent republic.
        Sent to be Westmoreland's deputy for pacification, Komer immediately started building a new organization — Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development, or Cords — which brought together American military and civilian advisers to work with South Vietnamese in mobilizing civilians against the National Liberation Front, known to its enemies as the Vietcong.
        For the moment, things looked headed in the right direction. South Vietnam adopted its new constitution, and elections brought in a bicameral National Assembly and thousands of popularly chosen village and hamlet chiefs. And a relatively clean presidential campaign ended with Thieu as president and Ky as vice president. South Vietnam now had in place a political infrastructure to support villages, grow the economy and provide more manpower for the armed forces.
        Westmoreland likewise adjusted his military efforts to the new strategy. In a public address at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 21, 1967, he announced his plan for ending American combat in South Vietnam. He called this "Phase IV" or "the final phase," in which American forces became "progressively superfluous" to the defense of South Vietnam. "U.S. units can begin to phase down as the Vietnamese Army is modernized and develops its capacity to the fullest." In an appearance on "Meet the Press" after the speech, Westmoreland predicted that American forces would start to withdraw from South Vietnam in "two years or less."
        And he was right: American forces began their drawdown from combat in August 1969 — but not before another 21,000 American soldiers died in combat.
        Stephen B. Young is the global executive director of the Caux Round Table. He worked for the United States Agency for International Development in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

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        3)  Climate March Draws Thousands of Protesters Alarmed by Trump’s Environmental Agenda
        By NICHOLAS FANDOS



        WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of demonstrators, alarmed at what they see as a dangerous assault on the environment by the Trump administration, poured into the streets here on Saturday to sound warnings both planetary and political about the Earth’s warming climate.
        Starting at the foot of the Capitol, the protesters marched to the White House, surrounding the mansion while President Trump was inside on his 100th day in office. Once there, the demonstrators let out a collective roar, meant to symbolically drown out the voices of the administration’s climate change deniers.

        The protesters, who had gathered for the latest in what has become near-weekly demonstrations of varying stripes against the president, then offered a chant: “Resistance is here to stay, welcome to your 100th day.”
        Billed as the Peoples Climate March, the demonstration here in Washington, and hundreds of smaller events like it across the country, had long been planned to mark the 100th day of the new president’s term. What organizers did not know, at least initially, was that that president would be Mr. Trump.
        His administration has gone on to begin rolling back his predecessor’s most ambitious environmental measures, renewing fears that government inaction will send the world headlong into an era of rising seas and violent weather.
        “I want to make a statement. I’m showing my daughters we can believe in something and express what we believe in,” said Scott Trexler, who came with one of his daughters and a church group from Rocky Ridge, Md., to march for the first time. He said his faith demanded it. “I believe the environment is important for my daughters and future generations,” he said.
        The demonstration was also being used to gauge what Democrats hope is a blossoming opposition movement to Mr. Trump that they can parlay into lasting political power.
        “There has been devastating news on climate coming out of the White House and Congress, and a lot of people are really angry,” said May Boeve, the executive director of 350.org, an environmental advocacy group that helped plan the march. “We can’t deny that is a big part of it. But we want to make a distinction between anger and resolve.”
        The demonstration’s organizers made a point of casting a big net, seeking to make the case that climate change is interwoven with traditional social justice issues like racial, gender and economic inequality.
        The marchers in Washington included Hollywood celebrities and stars of the political left like former Vice President Al Gore and the business magnate Richard Branson. The front of their ranks, though, was reserved for ordinary people: the immigrants, indigenous people, laborers, coastal dwellers and children, who organizers say are most vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate.
        Alphonse LeRoy, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, said he had traveled to Washington with so-called water protectors like himself who had spent time protesting the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.
        “I think first of the grass, plants, animals, eagles, birds, fish — without water, nothing will survive,” he said. “This isn’t just important for me; it’s important for everybody.”
        Thousands of the marchers arrived by car, train or bus. Bren Smith of New Haven came on a 24-foot oyster vessel. “We’re here because climate change is an economic issue now,” said Mr. Smith, a commercial fisherman. “This is not just about bees and bears anymore, it’s about jobs.”
        At a rally in Chicago, Sue Meyers, a retired teacher from Frankfurt, Ill., said it was important to tell skeptics on climate change that “nowhere else in the world do people think like this.”
        “The problems need to be addressed, and to deny there is a problem is even worse,” she added.
        In Los Angeles, protesters gathered near the port, where the oil refiner Tesoro wants to expand its operation. “A lot more people are becoming engaged because they realize they have to,” said Kaya Foster, an environmental educator and activist from Santa Monica.
        Around the country, the demonstrators’ list of grievances was long. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has appointed one of the chief antagonists of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, as its administrator and proposed slashing its budget by nearly a third, more than any other federal agency. He has signed several executive ordersaimed at rolling back President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations intended to close heavily polluting coal-fired power plants, and restrictions on vehicle emissions, among others.
        This past week, Mr. Trump signed orders intended to initiate reviewsaimed at opening certain protected lands and waters to drilling, mining and logging. His advisers were still debating whether the United States would remain in the landmark Paris climate accord. And on Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had taken down several agency web pages that contained climate data and other scientific information relating to climate change.
        Sweltering temperatures that threatened to break a heat record in Washington on Saturday added a poetic flourish to the demonstrators’ argument.
        Dire though the warnings were, the march was not without levity. One group wheeled a large “Trojan Oil Drum” that warned: “Climate Activists Inside.” White full-body polar bear suits dotted the crowd, their owners dripping in sweat underneath as they posed for seemingly endless photographs. Others hoisted miniature wind turbines, which twisted in the wind.
        “We’re here, we’re hot, this planet’s all we got,” demonstrators chanted. As they passed the Trump International Hotel, the chant became “Shame, shame, shame.”
        For organizers, the demonstrations offered a chance to assess the progress and setbacks since the first People’s Climate March in New York City in 2014. That march, organized by many of the same groups to urge international leaders to take collective action, predated both the Paris accord and many of Mr. Obama’s most ambitious actions.
        Two and a half years later, organizers said their movement had grown considerably more diverse. They said they were focused on building a political coalition capable of countering Mr. Trump and advancing liberal policies at all levels of government. A daylong training workshop for those contemplating running for office was planned for Sunday.
        Saturday’s march came a week after thousands of scientists and their supporters gathered here to respond to what they called threats against their enterprise by the administration. Another march, for immigrant and worker rights, was scheduled for Monday.
        Cindy Wiesner, the national coordinator for the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, a coalition of liberal organizing groups, said leaders of the movement hoped to capture that energy.
        “I think there’s a lot more clarity about the stakes for all of our communities,” she said.


        Reporting was contributed by Emily Baumgaertner and Coral Davenport from Washington, Adeshina Emmanuel from Chicago, and Ciaran McEvoy from Los Angeles.



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        4)  Brazil Gripped by General Strike Over Austerity Measures
        By SIMON ROMERO


        RIO DE JANEIRO — A general strike disrupted cities around Brazil on Friday as unions marshaled resistance to austerity measures proposed by the scandal-ridden government of President Michel Temer, reflecting his struggle to persuade voters that his proposals to overhaul pension systems and labor laws are necessary.
        Tensions flared in Rio de Janeiro, with schools warning parents to keep students at home, security forces using tear gas on protesters at ferry terminals near Guanabara Bay and clashes erupting in Santos Dumont Airport. In São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, protesters blocked highways, halted much of the public transit network and shut down access to an array of public buildings.
        The strike also hit cities elsewhere in Brazil, including Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and the capital, Brasília, though many businesses in the country were still able to open on Friday, at least partly, or operate at a slower pace than usual.
        “The strike is completely justified, but I’d be fired if I didn’t go to work,” said Marco Basaglia, 48, a bank employee in São Paulo who walked to work Friday instead of taking public transportation. “Temer hates working people. This is the worst government Brazil has ever had.”

        The strike revealed deep fissures in Brazilian society over Mr. Temer’s government and its policies. The president remains deeply unpopular after rising to power last year with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. But Mr. Temer argues that his overhauls are needed to restore confidence in Brazil’s weak economy.
        Indeed, some problems are glaring. The pension system allows many Brazilians to retire in their 50s, causing deficits to balloon and depleting resources for basic services like education and health care. And some economists contend that byzantine labor laws stymie competitiveness and prevent companies from hiring more workers.
        “The majority of people in this strike are union members defending personal interests,” said Joel Matos, 49, an engineer in Rio who hurried to work on Friday in the rain. Mr. Matos, explaining that he was “neutral” on Mr. Temer’s proposals, said: “Some changes will not change our lives. Others have already happened, like outsourcing.”
        Still, even at a time when the leftist Workers’ Party of Ms. Rousseff and her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is also marred by its own graft scandals, the ability of unions to organize the strike reflected broad dissatisfaction with Mr. Temer and his allies in Brazil’s political establishment.
        A poll this month showed that 92 percent of Brazilians thought the country was on the wrong path, with Mr. Temer’s own approval rating standing at just 4 percent. The survey by Ipsos, a global market research company, was conducted from April 1 to 12 in face-to-face interviews with 1,200 people with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
        While pushing for the austerity policies, Mr. Temer’s allies in the Senate also seem to have another priority: curbing graft inquiries. With nearly a third of its members under investigation for corruption, the Senate voted this week to punish prosecutors for so-called abuses of power.
        Mr. Temer himself is facing a claim that he negotiated a $40 million bribe in 2010 for his Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, an accusation he denies. The president’s supporters say he has temporary immunity from being investigated for matters outside his time in office, which lasts through 2018.
        His top aides denounced the strike, with Justice Minister Osmar Serraglio dismissing it as “nonsense” and “generalized disorder” in an interview. But with members of Congress seeking to preserve their own generous pension benefits, much of the establishment seems ignorant of the mood on the streets.
        On the eve of the strike, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that elite public servants could collect salaries of more than about $140,000 a year, a limit established in the Constitution. Justice Ricardo Lewandowski said it would be unfair for a civil servant carrying out multiple duties to get “paltry remuneration.”
        The ruling, in a country where roughly half the population scrapes by on a minimum wage of about $4,000 a year, may reinforce perceptionsthat Brazil’s most privileged public employees are finding ways to enhance their wealth at a time when the authorities are pressing for austerity measures.
        Amid such developments, some supporters of Mr. Temer’s overhauls say he also needs to elicit sacrifices from members of the political and economic elite, or at least do a better job of explaining how the austerity measures could eventually help most Brazilians.
        “If the reforms are supposed to improve things, why is there so much resistance to them?” asked Celso Ming, a financial columnist for the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo. “Above all, the feeling of the common citizen is that life isn’t just worse than it was a few years ago, but that it’s getting even grimmer.”
        Much depends on perspective. Investors betting on Mr. Temer’s ability to deliver helped push Brazil’s main stock index up more than 20 percent over the past year. But Brazil’s unemployment rate climbed to 13.7 percent in the first quarter as a harrowing economic downturn grinds on.
        “Temer is sinking the country,” said Camila Oliveira, 24, a saleswoman at a jewelry store in São Paulo, emphasizing that she also viewed the strike as “garbage.”
        “The situation is very ugly,” she said. “If I had the money, I’d leave Brazil.”


        Follow Simon Romero on Twitter @viaSimonRomero.
        Dom Phillips contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro, and Paula Moura from São Paulo.

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        5)  Marines Return to Helmand Province for a Job They Thought Was Done
        By MUJIB MASHAL

        hought-was-done.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=
        world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront
        CAMP SHORAB, Afghanistan — Before the American flag was lowered, folded and retired and the last of the Marines left the Afghan province of Helmand in 2014, their commander offered some optimistic parting words.
        The commander, Brig. Gen. Daniel D. Yoo, said the Marines had done their job, one of the largest undertakings in the force’s history. At the peak of the war in southern Afghanistan, more than 20,000 Marines flooded the Taliban stronghold, pushing the insurgents out of several districts in Helmand. In their place, the Marines helped Afghan forces establish the combination of security and essential services that became known as a “government in a box.”
        Afghan forces would now be responsible for security in Helmand, General Yoo said, “and I am confident in their abilities to continue to succeed.”
        It did not quite turn out that way.
        Since 2014, resurgent Taliban militants have gained territory, and the Afghan security forces have lost men at such high rates that entire units have needed to be replenished. The local “government in a box” arrangements have mostly crumbled.
        So on Saturday, the Marines returned to Helmand with a force of 300; roughly half of them had previously served in the province. The same flag that was lowered in 2014 and then stored at the Pentagon office of the commandant of the Marine Corps was raised again at the 6,500-acre Camp Shorab, which the Marines will be sharing with the Afghan Army’s struggling 215th Maiwand Corps.
        The Marines’ new mission is a difficult one: to assist and train Afghan soldiers and police to defend the provincial capital. The Taliban control seven of the province’s 14 districts and are encroaching on five others. The government fully controls just two, local officials say.
        “It’s kind of disheartening — the sacrifices you and your Marines made, and to see it go back to where it was,” said Gunnery Sgt. Ronnie C. Mills, of Kentucky, who is on his second tour of Helmand after serving three tours in Iraq.
        During his previous stint in Helmand, Sergeant Mills served in Marja, which was the scene of one of the biggest battles in 2010 after President Barack Obama ordered a troop surge to break the Taliban’s momentum. By the end of his tour in July 2011, Sergeant Mills said, the Marja district was “safe enough to walk down the road, to go to the bazaars.”
        Now, the Afghan troops who remain in Marja can be supplied only by air, because the government is struggling to clear and secure the roads leading to the district.
        Nevertheless, Sergeant Mills said he was hopeful that his team, drawing on their experiences in Helmand, could help the Afghan forces. The Afghans have the “heart and ability,” he said, but need to learn how to fight as cohesive units.
        “It will make a huge impact,” he said of the arrival of the 300 Marines. “Everybody here has sacrificed and been here before, and it means a lot to them to see this succeed.”
        Helmand played a major role in the recent history of the Marine Corps, and it was once so saturated with Marines that some called it “Marinistan.”
        The Marine Corps’ involvement in the province began in 2001, when Jim Mattis, who was then a brigadier general and is now secretary of defense, led about 1,000 Marines into the desert to establish one of the first American bases in the country after the invasion ordered by President George W. Bush.
        But only after Mr. Obama ordered the troop surge in 2009 did Marines pour into the province. In the absence of an Afghan security force, the Marines pushed out the Taliban and created opportunities for Afghans to govern their districts. In the process, about 350 Marines were killed in Helmand and thousands were wounded.
        “Pretty much my generation, when I came into the Marine Corps, all of the people above me had been here, and those were the people I looked up to,” said Cpl. Allan Oshea, of Alabama, who is on his first tour of the province. “When certain places fell again, it brought tears to people that had been here.”
        The challenge facing the 300 Marines as they try to prepare the Afghan forces for the fight ahead was clear during the transfer of authority ceremony. Brig. Gen. Douglas A. Sims, the commander of the departing Army unit that the Marines are replacing, described the difficulties his soldiers had encountered since last fall.
        “We spent the first few months in a knife fight with the Taliban, as the enemy pressed hard for Lashkar Gah,” General Sims said, referring to the provincial capital. “The governor and I spoke late into the evening, and early in the morning, with the sound of small arms and RPGs” — rocket-propelled grenades — “clearly audible across the river from his residence.”
        He said he had seen more progress since the Afghan Army replaced a corps commander who is in jail now for corruption.
        But the biggest challenge for the Marines will be to help Afghan forces regain territory and hold it. Abdul Jabar Qahraman, President Ashraf Ghani’s former envoy in charge of operations in Helmand, said that for a long time the people of Helmand had sided with the Afghan forces, but that the government had repeatedly failed the civilian population and “left them handcuffed for the brutal enemy.” He said he expected that the Afghan forces would struggle to regain the population’s trust.
        “There is no contact between the security forces and the local people,” Mr. Qahraman said. “People do not believe the promises of security forces, and the security forces always remain inside their bases, they don’t get out.”


        Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Fahim Abed from Kabul.



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        6)  Arkansas Governor Rebuffs Calls for Execution Inquiry
        By ALAN BLINDER




        LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Faced with competing witness accounts of Arkansas’s fourth execution in a week’s time, Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Friday resisted demands for an independent inquiry into an execution that some people said had briefly led the condemned man to convulse and cough.
        The episode, at a prison in southeast Arkansas late Thursday, happened in the minutes after the state injected Kenneth D. Williams with a large dose of midazolam, a sedative that has been the subject of legal battles and widespread scrutiny after a series of controversial executions.
        “I see no reason for any investigation other than the routine review that is done after every execution,” Mr. Hutchinson said at the State Capitol here. “You don’t call for an independent investigation unless there’s some reason for it.”

        It was, perhaps, an appropriately contentious ending to a series of legal and political challenges to what began as a plan to execute eight convicted murderers over less than two weeks. Court rulings delayed four of the executions indefinitely.
        Although state officials said Mr. Williams had experienced an “involuntary muscle reaction” during his execution, some witnesses depicted a far more unsettling scene at the Cummins Unit in rural Varner, where the three other men were also put to death.
        A witness, Kelly P. Kissel of The Associated Press, said at a news conference that he and the other two reporters who observed the execution had noted that Mr. Williams was “coughing, convulsing, lurching, jerking” after the state began to administer midazolam, which is intended to render a prisoner unconscious and insensate before the use of painful lethal injection drugs.
        “This is my 10th execution,” Mr. Kissel said. “This is the first time I’ve seen that.”
        According to Mr. Kissel, Mr. Williams lurched 20 times — 15 of them in rapid succession — and emitted sounds that could be heard in the adjacent witness room. By then, a microphone in the execution chamber had been switched off. The unnerving moments concluded before a consciousness check. Mr. Williams was pronounced dead 13 minutes after the lethal injection drugs began flowing, an execution length that was not unusually long.
        Citing the news accounts and frustrated by court rulings that allowed the state to proceed with its execution protocol, lawyers for Mr. Williams and other death row inmates in Arkansas called for an investigation. This month’s other executions, they said, were also constitutionally unsound, a position that failed to persuade a succession of federal judges.
        “It’s essential that, starting today, Arkansas commission an independent investigation into the troubling executions this week and last week so that we can have a complete understanding about what went wrong in the execution chamber,” Scott Braden, an assistant federal defender who represents a number of capital defendants, said in a statement.
        Mr. Braden, who on Friday secured a federal court order for the state to preserve physical evidence from Mr. Williams’s body, added, “State officials must not be allowed to cover up what went wrong in all four of these executions.”
        But Mr. Hutchinson, the Republican leader of a state where support for capital punishment is substantial, is unlikely to face heavy political pressure to back an inquiry. The governor, who did not attend Thursday night’s proceedings, said that he would review the accounts of all witnesses, but he suggested that he would be deeply influenced by the assessment of Wendy Kelley, who presided over the execution as the director of the state’s Department of Correction.
        “If you have five witnesses, you’re going to have five different descriptions,” the governor said.
        The state could be entering an informal freeze on executions, chiefly because Arkansas’s remaining midazolam supply will expire at the end of the month and the state authorities would probably face challenges if they tried to buy more. Altering the execution protocol, the governor said, will not be a scheduled subject of a special legislative session that will open next week.
        The episode in Arkansas is certain to deepen disagreements about midazolam, which the United States Supreme Court has upheld as an execution drug. The drug, developed in the 1970s, grew into one of the pharmaceutical industry’s most popular sedatives and was first used in an execution in 2013. Although most executions that involved the drug prompted little outcry, midazolam was used in a handful of killings that did not appear to go smoothly.
        Death penalty critics have cited those cases to argue that the drug puts prisoners at risk of unconstitutional suffering, an assertion repeatedly rejected by the courts.
        Before his execution, Mr. Williams expressed remorse for his crimes, which left four people dead, and apologized to the families of the victims.
        “I humbly beg your forgiveness and pray you find the peace, healing and closure you all deserve,” he read from a statement, which he had signed, in part, as “Arkansas Death Row Preacher.”
        Just after Mr. Williams was put to death, a daughter of Cecil Boren, a victim, said she had no misgivings about how the execution had been carried out.
        “Any kind of movement he had,” the daughter, Jodie Efird, said, “was far less than his victims.”


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        7)  Too Scared to Report Sexual Abuse. The Fear: Deportation.
        By JENNIFER MEDINA




        LOS ANGELES — Cristina’s husband had hit and threatened her repeatedly for years, she said, but it wasn’t until last year that she began to fear for the safety of her young children, too. Reluctantly, she reported him and filed a police report.
        Cristina, an immigrant from Mexico who arrived in the United States as a teenager in the 1980s, began to apply for a special visa for victims of abuse that would set her on a path to citizenship and her own freedom. Then last month, she told her lawyer that she no longer wanted to apply. She was too fearful, she said, not of her husband, but of the government.
        “I am scared they will find me,” Cristina, who lives in a suburb of Los Angeles, said in an interview, asking that her last name not be used.

        Domestic violence has always been a notoriously difficult crime to prosecute. It often takes victims years to seek help, and they frequently have to be persuaded to testify against their assailants. And for many undocumented victims, taking that step has become exceedingly difficult because of fears that the government will detain and deport them if they press charges, according to law enforcement officials, lawyers and advocates from across the country.
        Since the presidential election, there has been a sharp downturn in reports of sexual assault and domestic violence among Latinos throughout the country, and many experts attribute the decline to fears of deportation. Law enforcement officials in several large cities, including Los Angeles, Houston and Denver, say the most dangerous fallout of changes in policy and of harsh statements on immigration is that fewer immigrants are willing to go to the police.
        The number of Latinos reporting rapes in Houston has fallen by more than 40 percent this year from the same period last year, Art Acevedo, chief of the Houston Police Department, said this month. The drop, he added, “looks like the beginnings of people not reporting crime.”
        In Los Angeles this year, reports of domestic violence among Latinos have dropped by 10 percent and reports of sexual assault by 25 percent from a year ago, declines that Charlie Beck, the chief of the Police Department, said were likely due to fear of the federal government. Dozens of service providers and lawyers interviewed said immigrant women were deciding not to report abuse or press charges.
        “We’ve always told our clients that even if you are undocumented, you don’t need to worry about it — the officers are going to protect you,” said Kate Marr, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, Calif. The level of fear now, however, is unlike anything Ms. Marr has seen in her nearly two decades of work with domestic violence survivors, she said.
        “Everything we’ve ever told our clients is out the window,” she said. “It’s so demoralizing and so frightening to imagine what happens if it continues.”
        The fear among immigrants was exacerbated by a case in El Paso, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a woman in February moments after she received a protective order against the man she said had abused her. The United States Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan independent agency, urged federal officials this past week to reconsider their courthouse arrest tactics. The agency said the Texas case and other courthouse arrests were having a chilling effect on immigrants throughout the country.
        The Department of Justice declined to comment on the concerns about increased fear among immigrants.
        Laura’s House, which helps hundreds of victims of domestic violence in Orange County each year, routinely asks clients about their immigration status so it can help them apply for visa protections if necessary. Under what is known as a U visa, victims of certain crimes receive permission to stay in the United State if they assist the police — and the promise of the visa often persuades victims of sexual assault and domestic violence to come forward.
        Previously, nearly half of the more than 70 new cases that Laura’s House received each month came from undocumented immigrants. In the last three months, that number has dropped to less than one a week.
        Many women share the concerns of April, 23, who waited for years before pressing charges against the father of her children and who asked that her full name not be used.
        “I would call the police and use another name or make a neighbor call,” said April, who came across the border from Mexico when she was about 8 and lives in Orange County. “When he came after me, he’d say that I would get sent back to Mexico and never see my kids again. I believed him for a long time.”
        Capt. James Humphries, who oversees the special victims investigations division in Montgomery County, Md., said he saw the willingness to report drastically backsliding in the county, where immigrants make up a large portion of the population. His unit has received roughly half the calls for sexual assault and domestic violence this year that it did in the same period last year, he said.
        “It’s a constant challenge for us to reassure the community that the way we work has not changed and that the White House cannot dictate to us how to police,” Captain Humphries said. “It affects all crimes across the board, but if you don’t have domestic victims coming forward, the reality is that they do not trust the police.”
        However, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins of nearby Frederick County, Md., has been a vocal proponent of strict immigration enforcement and said he had seen no evidence of decreased crime reporting among the immigrants there.
        “They don’t want to be victimized by anyone else,” Sheriff Jenkins said. “Nothing that we do on the streets has anything to do with immigration status, and folks in the immigrant communities, both legal and illegal, are smart enough to know that.”
        Still, others who work with victims say the impact of the fear is difficult to overstate.
        In Austin, Tex., the nonprofit organization Stop Abuse for Everyone provides forensic exams for sexual assault survivors, and more than half of the clients are Latino. While the organization does not have precise numbers, Kelly White, the chief executive, said that fewer rape victims were coming forward this year, and that many call the organization’s hotline for support but say they do not want to contact law enforcement.
        In Nassau County on Long Island, N.Y., the district attorney’s Office of Immigrant Affairs tip line for crime victims used to get up to 10 calls a week. But it has had none since December. And at End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, which helps about 700 women a year get restraining orders against their partners, the requests this year have dropped to almost zero, the lead attorney there said.
        The Los Angeles County Domestic Violence Council typically received about a half-dozen calls a week, with at least half from Spanish speakers. But since January, it has received only two calls, said Olivia Rodriguez, the executive director.
        “This is not normal,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “They assume that if they call a government entity it’s all connected, that they will be reported to ICE and sent away. So instead they are just taking the abuse.”
        Yanet, 56, who asked that her last name not be used out of fear of deportation, said she had endured more than a decade of abuse from her husband in El Salvador, where victims of assault have little recourse, before she decided to flee to the United States several years ago. She mostly worked as a cook in Los Angeles kitchens and in 2005 tried to obtain a visa meant for women escaping violence.
        But the lawyer she went to tried to force her to perform oral sex in exchange for his help, she said. Yanet initially worried about reporting him to the police, but she did file a report after deciding she would not be victimized again. Now she is reluctant to move ahead with both the charges and her visa application.
        “Every day I am scared that something will happen and afraid to even walk out of the door,” she said. “Doing something to get the attention of the government is worse. I don’t know who to believe or what is safe to do to protect myself.”
        Worries over deportation will only increase the feelings of fear and isolation for victims of sexual assault or domestic violence, said Wanda Lucibello, a former prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
        For years, Ms. Lucibello said, the office and other local law enforcement worked to make people feel comfortable that they could report crimes without fear that they would then become a target for deportation. Under the Obama administration, victims of crime were not considered a priority for deportation, and many local law enforcement agencies went out of their way to make inroads with immigrants.
        “When you’re talking about immigrant communities, you’re talking about perceptions and whether those perceptions are accurate or not,” Ms. Lucibello said. “If the perception is that there is a greater risk if you go to the police, you are going to be less likely to do so, and you are more likely to stay in an abusive relationship until you need to seek treatment at a hospital.”
        She added: “It’s really the opposite of what anyone should want. All of this strengthens the abusive partner.”


        Liz Robbins contributed reporting from New York.



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        8)  Judge in Houston Strikes Down Harris County’s Bail System
        By ELI ROSENBERG




        A federal judge in Houston has overturned the county’s bail system for people charged with low-level crimes after finding that it disproportionately affected indigent residents and violated the Constitution.
        The judge, Lee H. Rosenthal of Federal District Court, ordered Harris County to stop keeping people who have been arrested on misdemeanor charges in jail because they cannot pay bail.
        The ruling, part of a civil rights lawsuit against the county, came Friday in a case that began when a woman was arrested on a charge of driving without a license and spent more than two days in jail because she could not post $2,500 in bail.

        Judge Rosenthal wrote in the ruling, “Harris County’s policy is to detain indigent misdemeanor defendants before trial, violating equal protection rights against wealth-based discrimination and violating due process protections against pretrial detention.” She cited statistics showing that 40 percent of people arrested on misdemeanor charges in the county had been detained until their cases were resolved.
        The order is not final; it is a temporary measure as the larger case works its way through the courts. But legal scholars and the groups that brought the case said the ruling was a victory in the movement to overhaul the bail system that has been growing around the country. Judge Rosenthal’s order came after eight days of witness testimony and the presentation of volumes of evidence — 300 written exhibits, and 2,300 video recordings of hearings in which bail was set.
        The judge wrote that the plaintiffs had “demonstrated a clear likelihood of success” on the merits of their claims against Harris County.
        “I think it represents a real change in our legal system,” said Alec Karakatsanis, the executive director of Civil Rights Corps, a legal nonprofit based in Washington, which brought the case along with another nonprofit, the Texas Fair Defense Project, as well as the private law firm Susman Godfrey. Mr. Karakatsanis described the ruling as a “comprehensive and robust condemnation of the existing money bail system” that would reverberate beyond Texas.
        Harris County is not alone in its bail procedures, but its size and prominence — Houston, the county seat, is the fourth largest city in the United States, and its county jail system is the third largest — make the ruling particularly significant, said Fred Smith Jr., an assistant professor at Berkeley Law School.
        “If a judge is willing to take the time to have the hearing and put out a 193-page order, it’s sort of hard to imagine her coming out the other way down the line,” Mr. Smith said.
        Christina Swarns, the litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who had filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs, called it “a shot across the bow to other metropolitan areas.”
        Robert Soard, an assistant county attorney for Harris County, said the county was reviewing the court’s decision and had not decided whether to appeal.
        The practice of demanding money as bail is standard in the majority of jurisdictions in the United States. But a series of lawsuits and a growing body of research has led to questions about its efficacy and potential disparities based on race and income. In January, New Jersey dropped its money bail system for minor crimes, and Colorado has changed its bail systems. The discussion has been percolating in other states, as well.
        The challenge in Harris County has drawn the support of the new sheriff, Ed Gonzalez, a Democrat, and one of the 16 criminal court judges who are defendants in the case, Darrell Jordan, also a Democrat. The other 15 judges, all Republicans, continue to oppose it, a spokesman said. The county has retained Charles J. Cooper, a high-profile conservative litigator, to help in its defense.
        Lawyers for Harris County have pointed out that it has already started making substantial changes to its bail system, including a planned switch to more sophisticated method of setting bail that takes into account how likely an arrestee is to flee or commit a new crime. And they have argued that the county’s policies adhere to Texas’ laws on criminal procedure law, that they do not violate the Constitution and that they are not intended to needlessly detain arrestees.
        The order issued on Friday takes effect on May 15. People arrested on misdemeanors charges are to be interviewed about their financial conditions for an affidavit. Those who have been deemed eligible for release at a hearing will have the option of being released within 24 hours of their arrest, regardless of whether they can afford bail.
        Heidi Li Feldman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the ruling indicated that the lawsuit could open the door to expensive litigation against the county.
        “This gives tremendous force to those pushing for the reforms because they can say, ‘Look, it’s not just an unwise use of county resources, but the lawsuit has cleared the first hurdle of there being a viable extensive money damages claim,’” Professor Feldman said. “The judge has written an extraordinarily thorough, comprehensive, carefully reasoned memorandum in support of the order. Any challenge to it from either side is going to take a serious amount of work and expenditure.”
        The lawsuit was filed in May 2016 on behalf of Maranda Lynn ODonnell, who spent more than two days in jail because she could not afford to pay her $2,500 bond after she was arrested on charges of driving with an invalid license. It was soon merged with another lawsuit filed by Loetha Shanta McGruder — a mother of two who was pregnant when she was arrested and held because she could not pay a $5,000 bail — and Robert Ryan Ford.
        Lawyers for the plaintiffs have contended that about 500 people arrested on misdemeanor charges are detained in the Harris County jail system on an average night.


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        9)  Family by Family, How School Segregation Still Happens
        By KATE TAYLOR




        Elana Shneyer and Adam Kaufman live a few hundred feet from Public School 165, the Robert E. Simon School, on West 109th Street, at the edge of Morningside Heights in Manhattan. When they started looking for a kindergarten for their son, who will start in the fall, the school was an early stop.
        That made them unusual.
        Although their neighborhood is diverse, the children who go to P.S. 165, its zoned school, are mostly Hispanic and low-income. Most of the white students who live in the area it serves attend school elsewhere.
        But Ms. Shneyer and Mr. Kaufman, who are white, liked that the school had a Spanish dual-language program and that its kindergarten classes had only 10 to 15 students.

        They also knew they had options. Community School District 3, where they live, has a long history of giving parents alternatives to their zoned schools. So the couple also looked at the Manhattan School for Children, a progressive school that is open to all children in the district. The couple loved the school’s approach, particularly its commitment to integrating children with physical disabilities. But there was one thing that made them uncomfortable: While most of the students in District 3 are black or Hispanic, nearly two-thirds of the students at Manhattan School for Children are white.
        “We noticed that, and honestly, to us it was less appealing,” Ms. Shneyer said.
        She went to public school in District 3, at P.S. 75, the Emily Dickinson School, on West End Avenue between 95th and 96th Streets. Less than a fifth of the students were white, a percentage that hasn’t changed much over time. She went on to the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city’s most selective high schools.
        “I think public school shaped me in a lot of ways — that I feel like I can relate and talk to and be with people who are different from me racially, economically, socially,” Ms. Shneyer said. “It was very valuable in that way.”
        A look at the history of District 3, which stretches along the West Side of Manhattan from 59th to 122nd Street, shows how administrators’ decisions, combined with the choices of parents and the forces of gentrification, have shaped the current state of its schools, which, in one of the most politically liberal parts of a liberal city, remain sharply divided by race and income, and just as sharply divergent in their levels of academic achievement.
        In 1984, two years before Ms. Shneyer started kindergarten, less than 8 percent of the district’s 12,321 elementary and middle school students were white. Not a single school was majority white, and the only school where white students made up the biggest group was P.S. 87 on West 78th Street. At the time, many white parents would not even consider their zoned schools. James Mazza, who served as deputy superintendent, and then superintendent of the district, from 1988 to 1997, recalled in an interview that parents would sometimes come into his office carrying a newspaper with the test scores of every school in the district and explain that they didn’t want to go to their zoned school because of its place on the list. Though scores are often used as a shorthand for quality, they correlate closely with the socioeconomic level of the children in a school.
        “We tried to encourage people to make the decision about what school to attend based on more information than test-score results,” Mr. Mazza said, adding that that was often difficult. So the district pursued another strategy for attracting white, middle-class families: adding gifted classrooms, dual-language programs and schools that were open to all students from around the district.
        Thanks to these options, more white families began sending their children to District 3 elementary and middle schools. Today, over a third of the roughly 14,000 elementary and middle school students in District 3 are white. But they are unevenly distributed. All but one of the zoned elementary schools below West 90th Street are now majority white. But because white parents elsewhere in the district take advantage of alternatives to their zoned schools, elementary schools in more ethnically diverse neighborhoods, like Manhattan Valley and Morningside Heights, remain largely black and Hispanic, and poor. Their test scores trail those of the district’s mostly white schools, and as the neighborhoods gentrify, their enrollment is declining.
        The New York City Education Department has not put forward a plan to address the district’s growing disparities. Last year, the city withdrew a proposal to merge two elementary schools in Harlem because of low enrollment after parents protested.
        P.S. 145, the Bloomingdale School, is on West 105th Street, four blocks south of P.S. 165. A quarter of its students live in temporary housing. Last year, just 15 percent of third- through fifth-grade students passed the state reading tests, and only 7 percent passed the math tests. In recent years, less than half of the kindergartners living in P.S. 145’s zone who attended public school enrolled there. Some go to P.S. 75, others to the Manhattan School for Children or to charter schools.
        Scott Seamon, a lawyer who works in finance, lives in the area served by P.S. 145 and has twin boys who will start kindergarten in 2018. Given the school’s test scores, he said, “I feel like it would almost be malpractice to send my kids to school there, while the schools in the 70s and 80s have like a 70 percent passage rate.”
        In the case of P.S. 165, only two in five of the kindergartners who lived in the school’s zone and attended public school were enrolled there in 2015, according to Education Department data. White families disproportionately shun the school: Roughly a third of the public school students who live in the school’s zone are white, but only 13 percent of the school’s students are white. Its test scores, like those at the other district schools where black and Hispanic children are a majority, lag behind.
        Brett Gallini was the principal of P.S. 165 from 2010 to 2012, when he left to lead a charter school. Mr. Gallini said the school was underrated by many middle-class families in its zone. “I spent a lot of my time when I was a principal of 165 just advocating for the school, saying, ‘You know what, I can’t just tell you it’s a great school — come see it,’” he said. He said the school started offering more tours and parents would host meet-and-greets at their apartments for prospective parents.
        Mr. Gallini also asked parents in the neighborhood what they were looking for. The school was phasing out its gifted program when he arrived. Based on interest from parents, he decided to revive it, which proved popular, though many of its students come from elsewhere in the district.
        The current principal, Aracelis Castellano-Folk, attended the school in the early 1970s, and has moved to improve P.S. 165’s instruction, with two full-time teacher coaches for English language arts and math, and a new math program. Her efforts have paid off in higher test scores: Last year 47 percent of third- through fifth-grade students passed the state English exam, and 42 percent passed the math exam, up from 24 percent and 35 percent the year before. But Ms. Castellano-Folk seems to be less effective than Mr. Gallini was at selling the school to prospective parents. Enrollment, after rebounding under Mr. Gallini, has again declined.
        Some of the school’s Hispanic parents have complaints of their own.
        Fatima Ortiz, 40, attended P.S. 165 and has sent three children there. Two have already graduated, and one, a son, is currently in fourth grade. She said she didn’t feel the school was safe, adding that there was bullying and children were inadequately supervised. One of her older children attends Mott Hall II, a middle school in the same building, and she said that at that school, parents were welcome to walk into the office anytime. But she said that was not true at P.S. 165. “From my point of view, I think, ‘What are they hiding?’” she said.
        (Ms. Castellano-Folk said that the students’ safety was her highest priority and that parents were invited to an informal meeting with her once a month.)
        Ms. Ortiz didn’t think having more white or upper-middle-class parents in the school would necessarily improve it, since she thought that they would mostly push for programs that benefited their own children. She said it seemed that Ms. Castellano-Folk already gave parents in the gifted program preferential treatment.
        Others expressed positive feelings about the school.
        Milagros Bueno, whose son is in second grade in the dual-language program, said that the teachers were wonderful, and that her son was thriving. Unlike Ms. Ortiz, she thought that having more racial diversity and more wealthy families would be good for the school.
        “More affluent families mean that the school gets a better rating and also that we get more funding, because they definitely advocate,” she said. “As people of color, unfortunately we don’t do as much advocating as them.”
        On a tour for prospective parents in January, Ms. Castellano-Folk answered a query about the construction that had taken over the school’s play yard for younger students by saying she was not sure when it would end. “I don’t know that it’s a plan,” she said of the Education Department’s oversight, adding that it was supposed to be a two-year project but “things come up.” When another parent asked how the school celebrated religious holidays, she said curtly, “We can’t use that term.”
        On the morning that Ms. Shneyer and Mr. Kaufman visited the school, Ms. Castellano-Folk joined their tour at the end, walkie-talkie in hand. Ms. Shneyer asked several questions: Could the principal talk about the school’s approach to discipline? How did the school challenge students who were advanced? What was the interaction between the upper grades and lower grades?
        The couple were satisfied with Ms. Castellano-Folk’s answers, but the school’s falling numbers were evident. That morning a dual-language kindergarten class had only five students present. A second-grade class had fewer than 20 students. Several of the schools in the district’s southern portion have kindergarten waiting lists.
        Ms. Shneyer said later that she was impressed with the math program and liked the small class sizes, though Mr. Kaufman expressed concern about what low enrollment might mean for the school’s budget.
        “That was a surprise,” he said.
        “It seems like a benefit, smaller classes,” Ms. Shneyer said, adding, “People pay a lot of money to send their kids to places with low student-teacher ratio.”
        The couple’s kindergarten application was due Jan. 13. Though they remained concerned about Manhattan School for Children’s demographics, they had decided to rank it first on their application.
        “There’s a coherent vision for the school,” Mr. Kaufman said. “You can see that articulated through small and large decisions that are enacted through the school, and that really appealed to me.”
        But the odds seemed to be against them — 989 children entered the lottery for 90 seats — so they figured their son was most likely destined to attend the dual-language program at P.S. 165, their second choice.
        Manhattan School for Children was started in 1992 by a group of parents from the P.S. 165 zone who felt unwelcome at the school. Although the school is now on West 93rd Street, it originally opened in the 165 building. Its founders had actually shared Ms. Shneyer and Mr. Kaufman’s concerns about diversity, and in the early years the school consciously selected classes that were about one-third white, 10 percent Asian and the rest black and Hispanic.
        But roughly a decade ago, the Education Department told the school that it had to run a more formal lottery for kindergarten seats, in which students’ ethnicity could not be considered. Within a few years, the school was mostly white.
        Neither the District 3 superintendent, Ilene Altschul, nor Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña seems to have a vision for how to deal with the district’s segregation and the achievement gap between its schools. The zone lines for 11 of the district’s elementary schools were redrawn last year, but the new lines will probably change the demographics of only a few schools, at most. Ms. Altschul would say only that she was focused on “ensuring that all students in District 3 are provided with a high-quality education.”
        In the end, Ms. Shneyer and Mr. Kaufman’s son won a lottery spot at Manhattan School for Children, and one of his best friends got a seat there, as well.
        The deadline to accept the offer was April 7, and after some agonizing, they did so.
        Mr. Kaufman is happy that the process is mostly behind them, while Ms. Shneyer is still ambivalent, holding out the possibility that they could change their minds and switch to P.S. 165 before school starts.
        She said that most of all, they had wanted to find the school that was the best fit for their son. But she said she was also aware that decisions like theirs have an impact on whether schools thrive, or do not. In other words, the decision is more than just a personal one.
        “Putting our child there, we’re investing our time in a school,” Ms. Shneyer said. “Where do we want to do that?”


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        10)  Most New York City Schools Had High Lead Levels, Retests Find
        By KATE TAYLOR




        Last year, with fears about lead poisoning running high in the wake of the water crisis in Flint, Mich., New York City officials said that they had tested the water in all the city’s public schools and that the results should be reassuring: Only 1 percent of outlets had lead levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s action level of 15 parts per billion.
        But after The New York Times reported that the city had run the water in every outlet for two hours the night before taking the water samples, a process called flushing, experts said that the practice had most likely hidden lead problems. They said the city should throw out the results and redo the tests. In the end, the city did.
        On Friday, the new results were released, and they paint a starkly different picture: This time, 8 percent of outlets had lead levels above 15 parts per billion. And the vast majority of school buildings — 83 percent — had at least one outlet with a lead level above the threshold. The city had previously said that two-thirds of its roughly 1,500 school buildings had no outlets above the 15 parts per billion threshold. Flushing cleans most soluble lead and lead particles out of the pipes and thus reduces lead levels temporarily.
        Two schools in Queens were among the worst for the number of outlets involved.

        At Public School 95, the Eastwood School, in Jamaica, which has 1,500 students, 34 outlets had lead levels above the E.P.A. threshold. A water fountain in the cafeteria had a level of 3,200 parts per billion. Several other water fountains — in the cafeteria, a play area and a school hallway — had lead levels more than 40 times the E.P.A. action level. When the school was tested the first time, under the protocol that included the flushing, the highest level found was 35 parts per billion.
        At Public School/Intermediate School 208, in the Bellerose neighborhood, 36 outlets had lead levels above the threshold, including a classroom water fountain with a lead level of 1,740 parts per billion, and a faucet in a girls’ bathroom with a lead level of 8,850 parts per billion. When the school, which has about 700 students, was tested the first time, the highest level found was 24 parts per billion.
        In recent months, schools have sent letters home and posted them on their websites informing parents about the tests and the levels found in individual outlets. In January, the state released a summary of results from tests of about a third of the city’s school buildings.
        The city’s Education Department said every outlet where a sample exceeded the threshold had been turned off and would be turned on again only after it was replaced and new tests found levels below 15 parts per billion.
        Additionally, all schools where tests found at least one sample above the threshold have been put on a protocol of flushing the water every Monday morning before school starts.
        New cases of lead poisoning among children in New York City have declined significantly in the past decade. The city’s health department investigates cases of lead poisoning in children, and the Education Department said there had never been a known case of lead poisoning traced to drinking water in schools.




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