Monday, June 19, 2017

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS, ACTIONS
AND ONGOING STRUGGLES

B. ARTICLES IN FULL

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A. EVENTS, ACTIONS
AND ONGOING STRUGGLES

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Mark Your Calendars

Special Berkeley Hearing on Urban Shield:  June 20th, 6pm

Longfellow Middle School (1500 Derby St, Berkeley)

The Berkeley City Council will be voting on the city's participation in UrbanShield.

On Tuesday May 16 more than 200 people turned out to the Berkeley City Council in anticipation of the Council's vote on whether or not to continue Berkeley's participation in Urban Shield. After waiting six hours for the agenda item to be heard and after giving powerful testimony, we were told that the Council once again decided to postpone the vote. The coalition and supporters staged a walkout to show the Council that we won't stand for this kind of manipulation.

LET'S TURN OUT STRONGER AND MORE ORGANIZED!

We want to redouble our efforts at the upcoming meeting in showing the Berkeley City Council that they need to stand on the side of the people and not on the side of militarization and oppression.

In the meantime, please call and email the mayor and Council people to urge them to vote No To Urban Shield!

Mayor Jesse Arreguin/ (510) 981-7100/ mayor@cityofberkeley .info

District 1/Linda Miao/(510) 981-7110/ lmaio@cityofberkeley.info /

District 2/Cheryl Davila/ (510) 981-7120/ cdavila@cityofberkel ey.info

District 3/ Ben Bartlett/ (510) 981-7130/ bbartlett@CityofBerkeley.info

District 4/ Kate Harrison / (510) 981-7140 /  kharrison@ CityofBerkeley.info

District 5 / Sophie Hahn/ 510) 981-7150 / shahn@ CityofBerkeley.info

District 6 / Susan Wengraf / (510) 981-7160 / swengraf@ CityofBerkeley.info

District 7/ Kris Worthington / (510) 981-7170 / kworthington@ CityofBerkeley.info

District 8/ Lori Droste / (510) 981-7180 / ldroste@ CityofBerkeley.info

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California Alliance for Retired Americans

600 Grand Ave, Rm 410

Oakland CA 94610

510-663-4086,  californiaalliance.org

Hello

Please join CARA on August 14 to celebrate Social Security's 82nd birthday, and to re-dedicate ourselves to defend Social Security and preserve, improve, and expand it. Our confirmed speakers so far are Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works and Norman Solomon, author, columnist and activist.

Monday, August 14, Noon, in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza

Broadway and 14th St, 12th St BART Station.

Rally and Two-Block March to Federal Building

More program details to be announced.

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/yd94ezv6

Please contact

Michael Lyon, 415-215-7575, mlyon01@comcast.net, or

Jodi Reid, 415-550-0828,  jreid.cara@gmail.com

CARA is sponsoring events across California in July and August to defend and expand Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in the face of attacks from Washington.  Our Oakland event will draw people from all around the San Francisco Bay Area.  We are hoping you can publicize this event among your members, and bring them on August 14.   We are attaching a copy of our leaflet and a petition your members can sign and return. Anyone can sign the petition, it is not official, but will be used to show support for these programs.

Over its 82 years, Social Security has provided income and dignity to hundreds of millions of retirees and people with disabilities, their spouses and children, and to deceased workers' spouses and children.  For two thirds of seniors, it's been over half their income. Half of women and people with disabilities would be in poverty without Social Security. Almost 10% of children get it.  We will NOT go back to the days of workhouses!

Social Security is the nation's most effective anti-poverty program, yet it is entirely funded by us, we who work for a living, through FICA deductions from our paychecks, and by our employers.  Not a cent comes from the government; in fact our $2.4 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund is invested in loans to help the government run. Those loans must, and will, be repaid to Social Security. It's our program, our money!  Our past, our future!

Forces for austerity want to destroy or undermine Social Security by increasing the retirement age, decreasing the benefits and cost-of-living increases, and converting Social Security from a unified government program of collectively-guaranteed economic security for everyone, to a hodge-podge of private individual accounts for each recipient, invested in the stock market, and managed by expensive Wall Street money managers.

Now, the Trump administration wants to eliminate the payroll tax that is the financial foundation of Social Security and cut $64 Billion over ten years from Social Security Disability Insurance, an integral part of Social Security, by reducing future enrollment with work requirements.

Given this adversity, it's important we remember that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents won Social Security in the mid-1930s, the depths of the Great Depression, when everything looked stacked against us.  Social Security must be preserved, improved, and expanded. In the 1930s, Roosevelt said "Make me do it!"  We did. We can do it again!

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SIGN THE PETITION: DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST REALITY WINNER

https://couragetoresist.org/drop-charges-reality-winner/

Jun 8, 2017

Department of Justice:

Drop the changes against Ms. Reality L. Winner, the defense contractor who allegedly shared with the media evidence of attacks against US election systems by foreign agents. This information should not have been classified. Ms. Winner's prosecution appears politically motivated.

Courage to Resist will attempt to keep signers of the Reality Winners petition up-to-date with periodic news and alerts from her family and attorney. You will be able to opt out at any time.

WHY ALLEGED WHISTLE-BLOWER REALITY WINNER DESERVES SUPPORT

BY JEFF PATERSON, COURAGE TO RESIST. JUNE 8, 2017

Reality Winner is a 25-year-old Air Force veteran who was arrested in Augusta, Georgia on June 3rd. She allegedly released classified NSA documents to The Intercept, which were the basis for a story about Russian hacking efforts against US election systems leading up to last year's presidential election. Reality is currently in the Lincoln County Jail in Georgia, and faces up to ten years in prison.

Reality Winner—yes, that is her given legal name—did the right thing, and she should be defended.

Reality allegedly leaked information regarding attempted interference in an election, tampering that many believe assisted in Donald Trump's presidential win—despite earning nearly four million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The documents published by The Interceptonly confirm earlier accounts of US election hacking attempts and, given the current administration's extreme antagonisms against facts, the release of these documents was clearly in the public interest. Like the vast majority of government documents that are hidden from public view, these reports should have been declassified by now anyway.

Now Trump's own Department of Justice has targeted Reality. It's a sinister move, but on the other hand, simply a continuation Obama's unprecedented zeal in prosecuting whistle-blowers. Trump inherited an atrocious War on Leaks, and Reality is the latest victim of that war. Her arrest is a signal to the world, and the four million other Americans with access to classified information: Only sanctioned leaks benefiting the government will be tolerated.

There's a striking hypocrisy to Trump's crackdown. Less than a month ago the President was criticized for carelessly leaking classified information to Russian officials during a White House meeting. We now know this information concerned a bomb that is being developed by ISIS. This is standard operating procedure: lawmakers have no issue leaking classified information if it somehow furthers their interest, but they aggressively prosecute citizens who expose actual wrongdoing.

I believe that Reality Winner's possible actions should be understood within the context of recent heroic whistleblowing. Shortly before leaving office, Barack Obama commuted the remaining sentence of US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who was facing 27 more years in prison for exposing war crimes and corruption. Edward Snowden, who leaked information about our government's massive spying program, was granted asylum in Russia but faces espionage charges back home. Just like Manning, it seems that Reality was able to see the inner workings of the United States' war machine.

She served in the Air Force from 2013 until early this year, working as a linguist. Like Snowden, she would have had a better view than most as to how our security state works. Up until last week, she was a military defense contractor with the Pluribus International Corporation in the suburbs outside of Augusta, Georgia, and had Top Secret security clearance.

The US government has spent tens of millions of dollars in better auditing capabilities since the disclosures by Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Those that would rather keep the public in the dark as to what their government is doing with their tax dollars and in their name, have redoubled their efforts to identify whistle-blowers much more quickly. Winner's arrest was facilitated by the government's increased ability to more easily identify the relatively small number of people that recently accessed documents in question as well as the yellow-colored, nearly-invisible micro dots that most color printers today use to include a printer's serial number and time stamp on each printed page. This appears to have contributed to the focus on Reality Winner.

Reality is expected to plead not guilty to charges against her today. We don't know exactly why she allegedly released the NSA documents to the press, but we do have some insight into her views about the world. Her social media accounts show a woman who, like a clear majority of Americans, is critical of Donald Trump. She has also voiced support for Edward Snowden, and opposition to the US fabricating a reason to attack Iran.

According to The Intercept, [Winner's leak] "ratchets up the stakes of the ongoing investigations into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives . . . If collusion can ultimately be demonstrated – a big if at this point – then the assistance on Russia's part went beyond allegedly hacking email to serve a propaganda campaign, and bled into an attack on U.S. election infrastructure itself."

We are talking about a potentially monumental story that might require prosecutions, but Reality Winner shouldn't be the one who ends up in jail. While the details of the story continue to unfold, by all indications she deserves our support, and the release of these documents should be celebrated.

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Cuban Documentary "Between Changes"

May 19, 2017

HAVANA TIMES — "Entre cambios" (Between changes) is a documentary dedicated to a specific generation of Cubans: the one who had to live through the fragile limbo when the Soviet Union collapsed. We concentrated particularly on speaking to those who experienced these changes there, in the places where the events took place.

One of the most recurring testimonies that this documentary provides – and the research we did to carry it out – is that of people who went to COMECON (The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) countries under the sugarcoated notion that there they had a more advanced version of socialism that the Cuban version, and instead it turned out that they would be the witnesses of its downfall.

This is where the irony lies: surely, a lot of things used to be better off there than they were in Cuba, even under the centralized State system that the Kremlin imposed on the majority of the territories under its control, but everything "went downhill" between 1988 and 1991.

In the documentary, we can hear accounts from those who were in countries such as Hungary, and in several Republics of what used to be the USSR. We tried our best for these opinions to be diverse and critical.

There wasn't always enough space for all of the material we had collected for the documentary – and we have faith that the extensive research we did will have the opportunity to be covered in other media platforms, or maybe there will even be sequels to this documentary.

However, we tried to maintain a respectful, friendly and proactive dialogue that prevails throughout the film, in order to anchor the diversity of social coexistence today.

Cuba's "post-Soviet" generation – the one which lived in situ with the geopolitical collapse that led to the Special Period disaster here, to the capitalist reforms in Europe and the "excessive '90s" in Russia and its surroundings, with quite a few localized conflicts where a lot of today's jihadist terrorism was born and awful government administrations who justified well-established authoritarian run countries today – is a very active generation nowadays.

Both inside and outside of our archipelago, it has given rise to artists, intellectuals, engineers, bloggers, doctors, scientists and social activists from all kinds of political movements.

It's no coincidence that it was a generation that experienced a great shock (whether in Eurasia, or here in Cuba, where we also experienced a great time of change – but in a different way). We believe that their experiences – which haven't been published widely in explicit terms, which are what we have tried to collect – can contribute to preventing a lot of the negativity that is taking place in Cuba today.

We have to learn our lessons from history, something which clearly wasn't done in the post-1959 period, when existing critique of the then "USSR" was dismissed in Cuba.

This documentary is the result of a co-production between the independent production company "CreActivo" and the research team "Post Soviet Cuba" which is a member of one of the teams from the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLASCO).

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=125323

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Solidarity Statement from the California Coalition for Women Prisoners

Friends,

CCWP sent the solidarity statement below expressing support with the hunger strikers at the Northwest County Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma Washington, one of the largest immigration prisons in the country. People at NWDC, including many women, undertook the hunger strike starting at the beginning of April 2017 to protest the horrendous conditions they are facing. Although the peak of the hunger strike was a few weeks ago, the strikers set a courageous example of resistance for people in detention centers and prisons around the country.

Here is a link to a Democracy Now! interview with Maru Villalpando of Northwest Detention Center Resistance (http://www.nwdcresistance.org/) and Alexis Erickson, partner of one of the hunger strikers, Cristian Lopez.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/14/700_immigrants_on_hunger_strike_at

For live updates, visit:

https://www.facebook.com/NWDCResistance/

California Coalition for Women Prisoners Statement

California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) stands in solidarity with the hunger strikers, many of them women, detained by ICE at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), a private prison operated by the GEO group contracted by ICE in Washington state. We applaud the detainees at NORCOR, a county jail in rural Oregon, who recently won their demands after sustaining six days without meals.

Since April 10th, those detained in NWDC have refused meals to demand changes to the abhorrent conditions of their detention, including poor quality food, insufficient medical care, little to no access to family visits, legal counsel or legal documents, and lack of timely court proceedings. Hunger strikes are a powerful method of resistance within prisons that require commitment and courage from prisoners and their families. We have seen this historically in California when tens-of-thousands of prisoners refused meals to protest solitary confinement in 2011 and 2013, and also currently in Palestine where over 1,500 prisoners are on hunger strike against the brutal conditions of Israeli prisons.

As the Trump administration continues to escalate its attacks on Latinx/Chicanx and Arab/Muslim communities, deportations and detentions serve as strategies to control, remove, and erase people—a violence made possible in a context of inflamed xenophobia and increasingly visible and virulent racism. We stand with the families of those detained as well as organizations and collectives on the ground in Washington State struggling to expose the situation inside these facilities as well as confront the escalating strategies of the Trump administration.

CCWP recognizes the common struggle for basic human dignity and against unconstitutional cruel and inhumane treatment that people of color and immigrants face in detention centers, jails, and prisons across the United States. We also sadly recognize from our work with people in women's prisons the retaliatory tactics such as prison transfers and solitary confinement that those who fight oppression face. Similar abuses continue to occur across California at all of its prisons and detention centers, including the GEO-run women's prison in McFarland, California.. CCWP sends love and solidarity to the hunger strikers in the Northwest. Together we can break down the walls that tear our families and communities apart. ¡ya basta! #Ni1Más #Not1More

Northwest Detention Center Press Release May 4, 2017

Despite threats and retaliation, hunger strikers continue protest

ICE ignores demands for improved conditions

Tacoma, Washington/The Dalles, Oregon—Immigrants held at ICE facilities in two states—the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), run by GEO Group, and NORCOR, a rural public jail—continued their hunger strike today, despite growing weakness from lack of food. The exponential growth of immigration detention has led ICE to contract the function of detaining immigrants out to both private prison companies and to county governments, with both treating immigrants as a source of profit. ICE has been using NORCOR as "overflow" detention space for immigrants held at NWDC, and is regularly transferring people back and forth from the NWDC to NORCOR. People held at NORCOR have limited access to lawyers and to the legal documents they need to fight and win their deportation cases. They are often transferred back to NWDC only for their hearings, then shipped back to NORCOR, where they face terrible conditions. Jessica Campbell of the Rural Organizing Project affirmed, "No one deserves to endure the conditions at NORCOR—neither the immigrants ICE is paying to house there, nor the people of Oregon who end up there as part of criminal processes. It's unsafe for everyone."

The strike began on April 10th, when 750 people at the NWDC began refusing meals. The protest spread to NORCOR this past weekend. Maru Mora Villalpando of NWDC Resistance confirmed, "It's very clear from our contact with people inside the facilities and with family members of those detained that the hunger strike continues in both Oregon and Washington State." She continued, "The question for us is, how will ICE assure that the abuses that these whistle-blowing hunger strikers have brought to light are addressed?"

From the beginning of the protest, instead of using the strike as an opportunity to look into the serious concerns raised by the hunger strikers, ICE and GEO have both denied the strike is occurring and retaliated against strikers. Hunger strikers have been transferred to NORCOR in retaliation for their participation. One person who refused transfer to NORCOR was put in solitary confinement. Just this week, hunger striking women have been threatened with forced feeding—a practice that is recognized under international law to be torture. In an attempt to break their spirit, hunger strikers have been told the strike has been ineffective and that the public is ignoring it.

Hunger striker demands terrible conditions inside detention center be addressed—including the poor quality of the food, the dollar-a-day pay, and the lack of medical care. They also call for more expedited court proceedings and the end of transfers between detention facilities. Hunger strikers consistently communicate, "We are doing this for our families." Despite their incredibly oppressive conditions, locked away and facing deportation in an immigration prison in the middle of an industrial zone and in a rural county jail, hunger strikers have acted collectively and brought national attention to the terrible conditions they face and to the ongoing crisis of deportations, conditions the U.S. government must address.Latino Advocacy

Maru Mora Villalpando

www.latinoadvocacy.org

For live updates, visit:

https://www.facebook.com/NWDCResistance/

News mailing list: News@womenprisoners.org

http://womenprisoners.org/mailman/listinfo/news_womenprisoners.org

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Labor Studies and Radical History

4444 Geary Blvd., Suite 207, San Francisco, CA 94118

415.387.5700

http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/mayday.html

Hours

(call 415.387.5700 to be sure the library is open for the hours you are interested in. We close the library sometimes to go on errands or have close early) suggested)

7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Closed on all major holidays and May Day

We can arrange, by request, to keep the library open longer during the day or open it on weekends. Just ask.

Services

Reference Librarian On-site

Email and Telephone Reference

Interlibrary Loan

Online Public Access Catalog

Microfilm Reader/Printer

DVD and VCR players

Photocopier

Quiet well-lighted place for study and research

For an appointment or further information, please email: david [at] holtlaborlibrary.org

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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

To give by check:

PO Box 411074

San Francisco, CA

94141

Stock or legacy gifts:

Noelle Hanrahan

(415) 706 - 5222

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MEDIA ADVISORYMedia contact: Morgan McLeod, (202) 628-0871
mmcleod@sentencingproject.org

NEW REPORT FINDS RECORD NUMBER OF PEOPLE SERVING
LIFE SENTENCES IN U.S. PRISONS
Washington, D.C.— Despite recent political support for criminal justice reform in most states, the number of people serving life sentences has nearly quintupled since 1984.

A new report by The Sentencing Project finds a record number of people serving life with parole, life without parole, and virtual life sentences of 50 years or more, equaling one of every seven people behind bars.

Eight states — Alabama, California, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, and Utah — have at least one of every five prisoners serving a life or de facto life sentence in prison.
The Sentencing Project will host an online press conference to discuss its report Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences, on Wednesday, May 3rd at 11:00 a.m. EDT.

Press Conference Details

WHAT: Online press conference hosted by The Sentencing Project regarding the release of its new report examining life and long-term sentences in the United States. REGISTER HERE to participate. The call-in information and conference link will be sent via email.
WHEN:

Wednesday, May 3, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. EDT
WHO:

Ashley Nellis, The Sentencing Project's senior research analyst and author of Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences

Evans Ray, whose life without parole sentence was commuted in 2016 by President Obama

Steve Zeidman, City University of New York law professor and counsel for Judith Clark—a New York prisoner who received a 75 year to life sentence in 1983

The full report will be available to press on Wednesday morning via email.

Founded in 1986, The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.

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The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.
Sign up for our updates here. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe.
Problems viewing this email? Click here to view as a web page.


The Sentencing Project
1705 DeSales Street NW, 8th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20036
sentencingproject.org
202.628.0871

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When they knock on your front door: Preparing for Repression

BAY AREA ANTI-REPRESSION COMMITTEE

When they knock on your front door: Preparing for Repression
BY OAKLANDANTIREPRESSION

On May 24th 2017, police in the Bay Area raided two houses and arrested one person in connection to the recent protests in Berkeley California. In this moment of increasing state repression, we must be vigilant in protecting ourselves, each other, and our communities.

Never speak to the police. Remember that any response can incriminate you and others. You have a right to remain silent, but not to lie – even to say "I don't know." Better responses are "I have nothing to say to you." or "No comment." We recommend practicing how to respond to emergency situations such as raids where police are particularly threatening and nefarious about getting you to speak to them.

Share this information with friends and housemates, particularly those who are intimately tied to political communities but are not that involved or invested in them. These are often the people the state targets to get information on wider activist communities.

Political repression in any form has the common purpose of undermining our movements as a whole, even when it seems particular individuals are the targets. Therefore it is extremely important that we all get prepared for further repression. We do this by supporting each other in remaining calm and brushing up on some basic know-your-rights information as well as being mindful of how we communicate on the internet.

Here are some links with helpful info to get you started:

If an Agent Knocks
This booklet is the best know-your-rights manual to dealing with law enforcement encounters that we've come across. Although it was written for how to handle encounters with federal agents, the information is just as useful in situations with local police. The first chapter, which is only 8 pages, covers law enforcement visits and searches. The booklet also covers state infiltration, surveillance, grand jury resistance, and special considerations for non citizens.

Time to Beef up Defense Against Far-Right Doxxing
Now that there's a far right, internet-based movement growing in this country, we have to deal with attacks on two fronts: the state, and the far right. The alt-right might put you on the radar to the state and/ vis versa. If our personal information is available online, the alt right can find you and "doxx" you, meaning they publicize your name, address, phone number and your family members' names, addresses and phone numbers for the purpose of harassing and intimidating you. Below is an article with tips on preventing this from happening, along with a list of websites that the alt-right uses to uncover people's sensitive, personal information.

Security in a Box – Digital security tools and tactics
The state can and does monitor activists' communication and internet activity. This website is an excellent resource for giving you step-by-step guides to encrypting and securing your various devices and computer operating systems. It also goes over encrypting email.

Resisting Grand Juries
With resistance comes repression and unfortunately often repression leads to more repression. We can help damage control this by always refusing to talk to law enforcement. Sometimes investigations result in grand juries. It is important to be prepared to remain silent if subpeoned to a grand jury. We should all prepare ourselves to support those who refuse to testify. This website has tons of information on grand juries, how they work, and the importance of resisting them. We particularly recommend reading the "Statement of Resistance" written by a collective of folks from various movements in the Bay Area and endorsed by dozens of groups, political prisoners, and former grand jury resisters.

Lastly, if you or anyone you know has been approached by law enforcement or has been visited at their homes or jobs please contact the National Lawyers Guild at 415-285-1011 to access legal advice, resources, and support.

Solidarity is our best weapon in the face of repression. Lets use it!

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A Message to the... Activist Community From The Mothers and Family Victims Of Police Violence and the Racist Raids By ICE Immigration and NYPD Gang Units

This message is obviously directed to the East Coast cities of New York and New Jersey. But after reading their "What We Want, What We Need" May, 2017 - NY/NJ Parents 10 Point Justice Platform and Wish List I think the platform could be applied pretty much as is to practically every community. Check it out.

Mothers Message to the NY/NJ Activist Community

In order to effectively combat the existing opportunism, hidden agendas and to better provide ALL genuinely good willed social justice organizations and individuals who work inside of the New York and New Jersey metropolitan areas... with more concrete guidelines;

The following "10 Point Platform and Justice Wish List" was adopted on Saturday, May 13, 2017 during the "Motherhood: Standing Strong 4 Justice" pre-mothers day gathering which was held at Hostos Community College - Bronx, New York.......

"What We Want, What We Need"

May, 2017 - NY/NJ Parents 10 Point Justice Platform and Wish List

Point #1 - Lawyers and Legal Assistance: Due to both the overwhelming case loads and impersonal nature of most public defenders, the Mothers believe that their families are receiving limited options, inadequate legal advise and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in gaining access to experienced "pro-bono" and/or activist attorneys as well as the free resources provided by non-profit social justice and legal advocacy groups.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Point #2 - First Response Teams: The Mothers felt that when their loved ones were either killed or captured by the police that they were left in the hands of the enemy and without any support, information or direction on how to best move forward and therefore; WE WANT and NEED community activists to help us develop independently community controlled & trained first response teams in every borough or county that can confirm and be on the ground within 24 hours of any future incident.

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Point #3 - Security and Support At Court Appearances: The Mothers all feel that because community activist support eventually becomes selective and minimal, that they are disrespected by both the courthouse authorities, mainstream media and therefore; WE WANT and NEED community activists to collectively promote and make a strong presence felt at all court appearances and; To always provide trained security & legal observers... when the families are traveling to, inside and from the court house.

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Point #4 - Emotional/Spiritual Healing and Grief and Loss Counseling: After the protest rallies, demonstrations, justice marches and television cameras are gone the Mothers all feel alone and abandoned and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to refer/help provide the families with clergy, professional therapy & cultural outlets needed in order to gain strength to move forward.

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Point #5 - Parents Internal Communication Network: The Mothers agreed as actual victims, that they are the very best qualified in regards to providing the needed empathy and trust for an independent hotline & contact resource for all of the parents and families who want to reach out to someone they can mutually trust that is able understand what they are going through and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in providing a Parents Internal Communication Network to reach that objective.

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Point #6 - Community Offices and Meeting Spaces: The Mothers agreed that there is an extreme need for safe office spaces where community members and family victims are able to go to for both confidential crisis intervention and holding organizing meetings and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in securing those safe spaces inside of our own neighborhoods.

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Point #7 - Political Education Classes and Workshop Training: The Mothers agreed in implementing the "each one, teach one" strategy and therefore; WE WANT and NEEDfor community activists to help us in being trained as educators and organizers in Know Your Rights, Cop Watch, First Response, Emergency Preparedness & Community Control over all areas of public safety & the police in their respective neighborhoods.

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Point #8 - Support From Politicians and Elected Officials: The Mothers believe that most political candidates and incumbent elected officials selectively & unfairly represent only those cases which they think to be politically advantageous to their own selfish personal success on election day and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us in either publicly exposing or endorsing these aforementioned political candidates and/or elected officials to their constituents solely based upon the uncompromising principles of serving the people.

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Point #9 - Research and Documentation: The Mothers believe that research/case studies, surveys, petitions, historical archives, investigative news reporting and events should be documented and made readily available in order to counter the self-serving police misinformation promoted by the system and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to help us by securing college/university students, law firms, film makers, authors, journalists and professional research firms to find, document & tell the people the truth about police terror & the pipeline to prison.

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Point #10 - Grassroots Community Outreach and Information: The Mothers believe that far too much attention is being geared towards TV camera sensationalism with the constant organizing of marches & rallies "downtown" and therefore; WE WANT and NEED for community activists to provide a fair balance by helping us to build in the schools, projects, churches and inside of the subway trains and stations of our Black, brown and oppressed communities where the majority of the police terror is actually taking place.

The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he's a the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal... If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. Malcolm X

www.hugopinell.com

www.kiilunyasha.blogspot.com

@nyashakiilu

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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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My Heartfelt "Thank You!"

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Several days ago I received a message from both of our lawyers, Bob Boyle and Bret Grote, informing me that the latest lab tests came in from the Discovery Requests.

And they told me that the Hepatitis C infection level is at zero and as of today I'm Hepatitis C free.

This is in part due to some fine lawyering by Bret and Bob who—remember—filed the suit while I was in the throes of a diabetic coma, unconscious and thus unable to file for myself.

But it's also due to you, the people. Brothers and sisters who supported our efforts, who contributed to this fight with money, time, protests and cramming court rooms on our behalf, who sent cards, who prayed, who loved deeply.

I can't thank you all individually but if you hear my voice or read my words know that I am thanking you, all of you. And I'm thanking you for showing once again the Power of the People.

This battle ain't over, for the State's cruelest gift is my recent diagnosis of cirrhosis of the liver. With your love we shall prevail again. I thank you all. Our noble Dr.'s Corey Weinstein, who told us what to look for, and Joseph Harris who gave me my first diagnosis and who became the star of the courtroom by making the mysteries of Hep C understandable to all. An internist working up in Harlem, Dr. Harris found few thrills better than telling his many Hep C patients that they're cured.

This struggle ain't just for me y'all.

Because of your efforts thousands of Pennsylvania prisoners now have hope of healing from the ravages of Hepatitis C. [singing] "Let us march on 'til victory is won." So goes the old Negro Spiritual, "The Black National Anthem."

We are making it a reality. I love you all.

From Prison Nation,

This is Mumia Abu-Jamal

—Prison Radio, May 27, 2017

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Court order to disclose DA files in Mumia Abu-Jamal's legal case [video]

This 9-minute video gives background on new revelations about conflict of interest -- an appeals judge who had previously been part of the prosecution team -- in upholding the 1982 conviction of journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal on charges of killing a police officer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Tp5NlllLU

A ruling to implement a judge's recent order for "discovery" could be made on May 30.

Judge Tucker granted discovery to Mumia Abu-Jamal pursuant to his claims brought under Williams v Pennsylvania that he was denied due process because his PA Supreme Court appeals from 1998-2008 were decided by Ronald Castille, who had previously been the District Attorney during Mumia's 1988 appeal from his conviction and death sentence, as well as having been a senior assistant district attorney during Mumia's trial.

The DA is given 30 days—until May 30, 2017—to produce all records and memos regarding Mumia's case, pre-trial, trial, post-trial and direct appeal proceedings between Castille and his staff and any public statement he made about it. Then Mumia has 15 days after receiving this discovery to file amendments to his PCRA petition.

This date of this order is April 28, but it was docketed today, May 1, 2017.

This is a critical and essential step forward!

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Dear Friend,

For the first time- a court has ordered the Philadelphia DA to turn over evidence and open their files in Mumia's appeal. In a complacency shattering blow, the District Attorney's office is finally being held to account. Judge Leon Tucker of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court ordered the DA to produce all of the documents relevant to former PA Supreme Court Justice's role in the case. Castille was first a supervisory ADA during Mumia's trial, then District Attorney, and finally as a judge he sat on Mumia's appeals to the PA Supreme Court.

This broad discovery order follows just days after the arguments in court by Christina Swarns, Esq. of the NAACP LDF, and Judith Ritter, Esq. of Widner Univ.

During that hearing, Swarns made it clear that the District Attorney's practice of lying to the appellate courts would not be tolerated and had been specifically exposed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the Terrence Williams case, which highlights Ronald Castile's conflict, the Supreme Court in no uncertain terms excoriated the office for failing to disclose crucial evidence. Evidence the office hid for years. This is an opportunity to begin to unravel the decades long police and prosecutorial corruption that has plagued Mumia's quest for justice.

In prison for over thirty six years Mumia Abu-Jamal has maintained his innocence in the death of Philadelphia Police officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9th 1981.

"The Commonwealth must produce any and all documents or records in the possession or control of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office showing former District Attorney Ronald Castille's personal involvement in the above-captioned case ... and public statements during and after his tenure as District Attorney of Philadelphia."

It is important to note that the history of the District Attorney's office in delaying and appealing to prevent exposure of prosecutorial misconduct and the resulting justice. At every turn, there will be attempts to limit Mumia's access to the courts and release. it is past time for justice in this case.
Noelle Hanrahan, P.I.

Prison Radio is a 501c3 project of the Redwood Justice Fund. We record and broadcast the voices of prisoners, centering their analyses and experiences in the movements against mass incarceration and state repression. If you support our work, please join us.

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

Thank you for being a part of this work!

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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."

**********************

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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http://www.freeleonard.org/case/

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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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REVEREND EDWARD PINKNEY IS FREE!

Greetings & FYI & Please Forward:

Framed and sent to jail for 3 years. All because he dared to have a successful recall referendum against a corrupt Democratic Mayor in a town owned by Whirlpool.

Oh and did I neglect to mention that his successful boycott against Whirlpool reduced their stock market value to junk mail !!!---- Rev. Edward Pinkney Was Released on June 13!!!

After serving the minimum sentence, 30 months (2-1/2 years), for a crime he never committed, Rev. Edward Pinkney has been released on parole as of Tuesday, June 13!

From: gormatthews@gmail.com

To:  justice4bentonharbor@lists. riseup.net

Financial help is needed - we will present

Rev. Pinkney with a Welcome Home check at the Detroit celebration!

Send checks to ~
Moratorium NOW Coalition

5920 Second Ave.
Detroit, MI 48202
(on memo line write: Welcome Home Rev. Pinkney).

Let's give Rev. Pinkney a big welcome home from the belly of the beast!

He is in good spirits and looks forward to his reunion with his wife, Dorothy, his community, and.....the rest of us.

Oh and did I neglect to mention that his successful boycott against Whirlpool reduced their stock market value to junk mail !You can welcome Rev. Pinkney home yourself at a dinner in Detroit on July 8!Saturday, July 8------- 2pm
St. Matthew & St. Joseph Episcopal Church
8850 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI
Please support The People's Pastor by making financial    donations (checkout his website for an address or....see address above

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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

Email: DA_Central@phila.gov

Write to:

Major Tillery AM9786

SCI Frackville

1111 Altamont Blvd.

Frackville, PA 17931

For More Information, Go To: Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot

Call/Write:

Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com

Nancy Lockhart (843) 412-2035, thewrongfulconviction@gmail.com

Rachel Wolkenstein, Esq. (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com

Justice4MajorTillery/blogspot

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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

Dear Supporters:

Today marks the 5th Anniversary of when the United States Supreme Court Reinstated my Wrongful Life Sentence.

The prosecution in my case turned over NEVER seen before Case Discovery to my legal team. This Case Discovery I speak on was withheld from me and ALL of my prior attorneys for 18½ years. Not only was the prosecution's only witness was labeled a SUSPECT in this same murder I've been wrongfully convicted of, I was also furnished with a written statement from this same witness, for almost two decades I was told this witness never made a written statement. So I had to honor a police summary of this witness. Well, this statement shows my innocence and contradicts what this witness testified to from my preliminary hearing to my trial. To make a long story short, the prosecution in my case let this false testimony go un-correct from the lower court all the way up to the United States Supreme Court who relied on this testimony to Reinstate my conviction when I was a free man. This was done knowingly.

For the last 21 years, my family and I have been living this nightmare. Thanks to my legal team headed by Michael Wiseman and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, who have been working extremely hard to secure my freedom. The judge who is presiding over my case have seen enough evidence to award me an Evidentiary Hearing on my claims of Prosecution Misconduct (Brady Violations).

These hearings will be taking place on July 11, 12, 13 2017 starting at 9am in courtroom No. 8 at the Dauphin County Courthouse, 101 Market Street, 5th Floor, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17101.

Feel free to join me, my family and supporters in my pursuit of my future. For people in the New York Metropolitan area, The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice will be sponsoring a FREE roundtrip bus ride for my family, friends and supporters.

There are seats available on the first come basis. So please send an email asap and make your reservation.

Within the next couple weeks I will be transferred to Dauphin County Prison to await my court dates. I will see you there. I pray that this is the beginning of the end of my 21year nightmare. Thanks for your support and I encourage you to continue. Please continue to support me in any way you can. For those who are in position to financially contribute please do so--It's needed. My freedom is on the horizon.

Free the Innocent,

"The Pain Within"

Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

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 websiteand contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

Write: Lorenzo Johnson

DF 1036

SCI Mahanoy

301 Morea Rd.

Frackville, PA 17932

Email: via LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com

directly on ConnectNetwork -- instructions here

- Team Free Lorenzo Johnson

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B. ARTICLES IN FULL

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1) Education Dept. Says It Will Scale Back Civil Rights Investigations
By ERICA L. GREEN JUNE 16, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/education-department-civil-rights-betsy-
devos.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-
column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

2) Minnesota Officer Acquitted in Killing of Philando Castile
By MITCH SMITH JUNE 16, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/police-shooting-trial-philando-castile.html?hp&action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-
region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

3) Theresa May U-turns on promise to rehouse Grenfell Tower residents in local area

Theresa May performed yet another U-turn after going back on a promise to rehouse all Grenfell Tower residents in the local area.

By SAM SHOLLI, June 18, 2017

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/818155/Theresa-May-U-turns-on-promise-to-rehouse-Grenfell-Tower-residents-in-local-area

4) On Death Row, but Is He Innocent?

Nicholas Kristof JUNE 17, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-

death-row-innocent.html?_r=0

5) The Car Was Repossessed, but the Debt Remains

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and MICHAEL CORKERYJUNE 18, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/business/dealbook/car-loan-subprime.html?hp&action=

click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=

top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

6) Why Is the U.S. Killing So Many Civilians in Syria and Iraq?

By MICAH ZENKOJUNE 19, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/isis-syria-iraq-civilian-casualties.html?action=

click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=

opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

7) U.K. Didn’t Ban Cladding Used on Grenfell Tower, Experts Say

"Critics of the material have warned for years that aluminum surface sheets can melt in a fire, after which flames could race through flammable insulation. 'It is like you have got a high-rise building and you are encasing it in kerosene,' said Edwin Galea, director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich. 'It is insanity, pure and simple.'"

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CEYLAN YEGINSUJUNE 19, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/world/europe/uk-grenfell-tower-london-fire.html?hp&action=

click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=

top-news&WT.nav=top-news

8) Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families

By AZAM AHMED and NICOLE PERLROTHJUNE 19, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/world/americas/mexico-spyware-anticrime.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

9) Grim Echoes for Families: An Officer Shoots and a Jury Acquits

By MITCH SMITH, YAMICHE ALCINDOR and JACK HEALYJUNE 17, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/us/police-shootings-philando-castile.html?rref=

collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=

rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

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WASHINGTON — The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation's public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

According to an internal memo issued by Candice E. Jackson, the acting head of the department's office for civil rights, requirements that investigators broaden their inquiries to identify systemic issues and whole classes of victims will be scaled back. Also, regional offices will no longer be required to alert department officials in Washington of all highly sensitive complaints on issues such as the disproportionate disciplining of minority students and the mishandling of sexual assaults on college campuses.

The new directives are the first steps taken under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to reshape her agency's approach to civil rights enforcement, which was bolstered while President Barack Obama was in office. The efforts during Mr. Obama's administration resulted in far-reaching investigations and resolutions that required schools and colleges to overhaul policies addressing a number of civil rights concerns.

That approach sent complaints soaring, and the civil rights office found itself understaffed and struggling to meet the department's stated goal of closing cases within 180 days.

The office's processing times have "skyrocketed," the Education Department spokeswoman, Liz Hill, said, adding that its backlog of cases has "exploded." The new guidelines were to ensure that "every individual complainant gets the care and attention they deserve," she said.

In the memo, which was first published by ProPublica, Ms. Jackson emphasized that the new protocols were aimed at resolving cases quickly.

"Justice delayed is justice denied, and justice for many complainants has been denied for too long," Ms. Hill said in a statement.

But civil rights leaders believe that the new directives will have the opposite effect. They say that Education Department staff members would be discouraged from opening cases and that investigations could be weakened because efficiency would take priority over thoroughness.

"If we want to have assembly-line justice, and I say 'justice' in quotes, then that's the direction that we should go," said Catherine Lhamon, who was the assistant secretary of the Education Department's civil rights office under Mr. Obama, and who now heads the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

The commission — an independent, bipartisan agency charged with advising the president and Congress on matters of civil rights — voted on Friday to conduct a two-year investigation of federal civil rights enforcement, saying it had "grave concerns" about the Trump administration's agenda. The commission identified the Education Department as an agency that was particularly troubling.

Nevertheless, the department's move was lauded by advocates who believe that the office for civil rights has been overzealous in its enforcement activities in recent years.

Robert Shibley, the executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an advocacy group, said the measures will be welcomed on college campuses where the department has overstepped in carrying out sexual assault investigations. The organization is financially supporting a lawsuit against the department over a letter issued in 2011 directing campuses to change the burden of proof in cases of sexual assault.

"So many of the campus hearings are kangaroo courts with low due process, and you can't really have any confidence in the outcomes," Mr. Shibley said.

Both sides of the civil rights issue keyed on the department's decision to reverse its practice of automatically broadening investigations and scrutinizing years of data, searching for patterns of violations.

The practice of systematic reviews, which Ms. Lhamon supported while leading the civil rights office, uncovered significant evidence of discrimination in school districts.

"It's really a way of curtailing the way civil rights enforcement should be handled," Ms. Lhamon said, reacting to the department's new direction. "It's literally a stick your head in the sand approach."

For example, the department received a complaint that a black student at the Lodi Unified School District in California, about an hour south of Sacramento, received harsher punishment than a white student after the two were in a fight.

According to a published settlement agreement, the investigation found that schools with higher percentages of black students established stricter punishment for discipline incidents, and a review of four years of data revealed that black students across the district received disproportionately higher levels of discipline than white students.

But Mr. Shibley said the practice of systematic reviews was a significant burden, especially on colleges and universities, which sometimes had to review years of previous sexual assault complaints, and remedy anything they were found to have mishandled.

"That was quite alarming from a double jeopardy and civil liberties perspective," Mr. Shibley said.

Since her appointment as the education secretary, Ms. DeVos has come under fire from lawmakers and civil rights advocates for her remarks about the department's role in enforcing civil rights laws in the public school system.

The office is charged with enforcing legal prohibitions against discrimination by race, color, national origin, sex and disability.

Ms. DeVos has denounced discrimination in any form and has said schools that receive federal funds must follow federal laws. But she also believes in a limited federal role in education. She has signaled that her office is "not going to be issuing any decrees" on civil rights and that those should come from Congress or the courts.

In the memo issued last week, Ms. Jackson wrote that the department would "robustly enforce the civil rights laws under our jurisdiction, and we will do so in a neutral, impartial manner and as efficiently as possible."

Ms. Jackson issued another internal memo last week about how her office would respond to cases of discrimination after the rollback of Obama administration rules that encouraged states to allow transgender students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity.

Ms. Hill, the department spokeswoman, declined to release the internal document, but said it guides staff members on how to "functionally execute on these cases." Transgender cases will be investigated by the department "fully and fairly" and will not be dismissed or referred because of a lack of guidance.

However, the office has indicated that it will also be more judicious in tackling complaints in general.

In the administration's budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October, the Education Department has proposed cutting more than 40 staff positions from the office for civil rights, which would require the office to "make difficult choices, including cutting back on initiating proactive investigations," the department wrote.

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2) Minnesota Officer Acquitted in Killing of Philando Castile
By MITCH SMITH JUNE 16, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/police-shooting-trial-philando-castile.html?hp&action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-
region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

ST. PAUL — The images had transfixed people around the world: A woman live-streaming the aftermath of a police shooting of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, and narrating the searing, bloody scene that was unfolding around her.

On Friday, a jury here acquitted the Minnesota police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, of all charges in shooting, which happened in July 2016 and left Mr. Castile dead, raising the national debate over police conduct toward black people. Officer Yanez, an officer for the suburb of St. Anthony, had been charged with second-degree manslaughter and endangering safety by discharging a firearm in the shooting.

The verdict was announced in a tense courtroom here late Friday afternoon, after five days of deliberations, and the officer was led quickly out of the courtroom, as were the 12 jurors. Mr. Castile's family, which had nervously watched the proceedings from the front row, abruptly left as well.

"My son loved this city, and this city killed my son," Mr. Castile's mother, Valerie, said as she stood on a corner outside the courthouse afterward. "And a murderer gets away. Are you kidding me right now?"

She continued, "The system in this country continues to fail black people and will continue to fail us."

The case against Officer Yanez — believed to be the first time in Minnesota history that an officer was charged in an on-duty fatal shooting — hinged on one central question: Did the officer have reason to fear that Mr. Castile was reaching for a gun that he had acknowledged having with him when he was pulled over by the officer?

Officer Yanez testified that he feared Mr. Castile was grabbing for the gun, but Mr. Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, said he had merely been reaching for his identification to give the officer.

Though there was dashboard camera video of the events, as well as the live-stream video that Ms. Reynolds began taking after the shooting, there was no video clearly revealing the crucial moments in the front seat of Mr. Castile's car — and how precisely he had moved his hands before the officer fired.

The shooting set off large marches across the twin cities and, at one point, blocked off a major highway. It drew notice from President Barack Obama, as well as the governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, who asked aloud: "Would this have happened if the driver were white, if the passengers were white?"

On Friday, as news of the acquittal filtered out, a small group of protesters gathered outside the courthouse, expressing anger and dismay. "It's not us that were on trial, it was the system that was on trial," said Mel Reeves, a community activist.

Later in the evening, protesters gathered at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul to express their displeasure with the verdict. The police estimated that 1,500 people set off from there on a march, causing traffic backups and transit delays.

Mike Padden, a lawyer representing Ms. Reynolds, said he was surprised and disappointed by the verdict. "For those who are committed to the idea of leveling the playing field with law enforcement and the citizenry, it's a big blow," he said.

John J. Choi, the prosecutor who announced the charges against Officer Yanez, said on Friday that "this verdict brings a lot of hurt and pain and deep-seated frustration for a lot of people in this community." Mr. Choi said he was disappointed in the verdict, and believed that Mr. Castile "did nothing that justified the taking of his life."

"We gave it our best shot," said Mr. Choi, the Ramsey County attorney. "We really did."

The acquittal was the latest example of charges against an officer, but not a conviction. In recent years, officers in Cleveland, Pennsylvaniaand Tulsa, Okla., have been found not guilty of manslaughter. Elsewhere, including Cincinnati and South Carolina, jurors have deadlocked on charges after a fatal shooting and failed to deliver any verdict at all.

Among some advocates for police officers, the outcome was met with approval.

Earl Gray, a lawyer for Officer Yanez, said he was gratified with the outcome, but frustrated that charges were ever brought.

"The state didn't have a case in the first place," Mr. Gray said in an interview on Friday evening after the acquittal. "But because of the protests and the political pressure, I suppose you'd call it, he was charged and he had to go into court and defend himself."

Mr. Gray said Officer Yanez was "still very shook up" after the verdict, but "extremely happy it's over."

"He wants to get on with his life," Mr. Gray said.

As the officer left the courtroom, Judge William H. Leary III had said, "Mr. Yanez, you will now be excused from this matter with no further obligation to this court. Good luck to you."

Despite the verdict, though, officials with the city of St. Anthony, where Officer Yanez has worked for several years, issued a statement late Friday saying that they had "concluded that the public will be best served if Officer Yanez is no longer a police officer in our city." They said they planned to offer him a "voluntary separation agreement." In the meantime, the city said, he will not be returning to patrol.

Through a week of testimony in the trial, the case had centered chiefly on the conflicting accounts of what Mr. Castile, a longtime school cafeteria worker whom Officer Yanez had pulled over for a broken taillight at twilight on a summer evening, was doing before he was shot.

Prosecutors said Officer Yanez had created a dangerous situation, perceived a threat where none existed and, in addition to killing Mr. Castile, almost wounded Ms. Reynolds and her young daughter in the back seat.

"He was making assumptions and jumping to conclusions without engaging in the dialogue he was trained to have in a citizen encounter like this," Jeffrey Paulsen, a prosecutor, said in closing arguments. "And that's his fault, not the fault of Philando Castile."

Mr. Castile was licensed to carry a gun and was recorded on a dashboard camera video calmly telling Officer Yanez that he had a weapon in the car. Officer Yanez told him not to reach for the weapon, and Mr. Castile and Ms. Reynolds both tried to assure the officer that he was not doing so. Within seconds, Officer Yanez fired seven shots.

Prosecutors said Mr. Castile had mentioned his gun to allay concerns, not to threaten the officer or escalate the situation. "If someone were just about to reach in their pocket and pull out a gun and shoot an officer, that's the last thing they would say," Mr. Paulsen said.

Mr. Gray, the defense lawyer, said Officer Yanez had to react quickly to what he believed was an imminent threat. He said Officer Yanez smelled marijuana, believed that Mr. Castile matched the description of a recent robbery suspect and saw him grabbing a gun.

"We have him ignoring his commands. He's got a gun. He might be the robber. He's got marijuana in his car," Mr. Gray told jurors. "Those are the things in Officer Yanez's head."

Officer Yanez did not tell Mr. Castile about the robbery suspicions, only that his brake light was out. But Mr. Gray said that this approach made sense, and that Officer Yanez had acted reasonably given his training and what he knew that night.

"He did what he had to do," Mr. Gray said, adding that the situation was "tragic."

The jury of 12, including two black people, had to sort through the competing narratives. Both prosecutors and defense lawyers said the video footage supported their version of events.

At Officer Yanez's trial, in this small courtroom in downtown St. Paul, defense lawyers made repeated mention of Mr. Castile's and Ms. Reynolds's use of marijuana. The drug was found in Mr. Castile's car after the shooting, and Mr. Gray said that Mr. Castile had been under the influence of marijuana and delayed in his reactions at the time of the shooting.

"We're not saying that Philando Castile was going to shoot Officer Yanez," Mr. Gray said. "What we're saying is that he did not follow orders. He was stoned."

But Mr. Paulsen, the prosecutor, said that version of events was contradicted by video. He said footage showed that Mr. Castile was driving normally, pulled over quickly and was alert and courteous when talking to Officer Yanez. He accused the defense of blaming the victim.

"He offered no resistance," Mr. Paulsen said of Mr. Castile. "He made no threats. He didn't even complain about being stopped for such a minor offense."

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3) Theresa May U-turns on promise to rehouse Grenfell Tower residents in local area

Theresa May performed yet another U-turn after going back on a promise to rehouse all Grenfell Tower residents in the local area.

By SAM SHOLLI, June 18, 2017

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/818155/Theresa-May-U-turns-on-promise-to-rehouse-Grenfell-Tower-residents-in-local-area

The Prime Minister has now admitted that some of the residents may be rehoused in other parts of London – despite reassurance from housing minister Alok Sharma all occupants would be rehoused near the west London tragedy.

Last night, Mrs May said that the residents would be found homes in the same borough or neighbouring ones.

Mr Sharma told MPs on Thursday that the "Government will guarantee that every single family from Grenfell Tower will be rehoused in the local area".

Kensington and Chelsea borough is bordered by four other boroughs, including Brent and Wandsworth, the farthest reaches of which are around eight and nine miles away from Grenfell Tower respectively.

Theresa May yesterday announced a £5 million aid package for those affected by the fire and that she would rehouse victims "as close as practically possible to where they previously lived — meaning they can continue to access the same public services such as their local school or local GP".

She added: "The package of support I'm announcing today is to give the victims the immediate support they need to care for themselves and for loved ones. We will continue to look at what more needs to be done.

"Everyone affected by this tragedy needs reassurance that the Government is there for them at this terrible time - and that is what I am determined to provide."

Labour's newly elected Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad said it was vital "remain together [so] these traumatised people… can look after one another".

Jeremy Corbyn added it was "critical that all the residents of Grenfell Tower are rehoused in the community they love. It is unacceptable that at this time of intense stress and trauma for them, the council and the Government are not able to guarantee this."

Mustafa Al Mansour, who organised a protest outside Kensington town hall yesterday, demanded that the Government "cover the cost of rehoming the victims of this tragedy".

The Prime Minister visited residents yesterday but is facing mounting criticism after not meeting those affected by the blaze sooner.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, London mayor Sadiq Khan, Prince William and the Queen have all visited the local area.

More than 250 firefighters were called to deal with the Grenfell Tower fire, which has killed at least 30 people.

Grenfell Tower provided social housing for roughly 600 people

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4) On Death Row, but Is He Innocent?

Nicholas Kristof JUNE 17, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-

death-row-innocent.html?_r=0

One June day in 1983, a California professor drove over to a neighbor's house to pick up his 11-year-old son from a sleepover. Nobody answered the door, so the professor peered through a window — and saw a ghastly panorama of blood.

The professor found his son stabbed to death, along with the bodies of Peggy and Doug Ryen, the homeowners. The Ryens' 10-year-old daughter was also dead, with 46 wounds, but their 8-year-old son was still breathing.

This quadruple murder began a travesty that is still unfolding and underscores just how broken the American justice system is. A man named Kevin Cooper is on San Quentin's death row awaiting execution for the murders, even though a federal judge says he probably is innocent.

"He is on death row because the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department framed him," the judge, William A. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, declared in a searing 2013 critique delivered in a distinguished lecture series.

Fletcher was in the minority in 2009 when his court refused to rehear the case. His dissent, over 100 pages long, points to Cooper's possible innocence and to systematic police misconduct. It's a modern equivalent of Émile Zola's "J'accuse."

At least 10 other federal judges have also expressed concerns about Cooper's conviction. Many other eminent legal experts, including the then-president of the American Bar Association, have also called on Gov. Jerry Brown to intervene.

The evidence of police tampering is overwhelming. When lawyers working on Cooper's appeal asked for DNA testing on a T-shirt believed to belong to the killer, the lab found Cooper's blood on the shirt — but also something astonishing: The blood had test tube preservative in it! In other words, it appeared to have come from the supply of Cooper's blood drawn by the police and kept in a test tube.

When the test tube was later examined, it had the DNA of at least two people in it. It appeared that someone had removed some of Cooper's blood and then topped off the test tube with the blood of one or more other people to hide the deception.

What's extraordinary about the case is that not only is it likely that Cooper is innocent, but that we also have a good idea who committed the murders.

The 10-year-old victim, Jessica Ryen, died with a clump of light hair in her hands, and the 8-year-old survivor, her brother, Joshua, repeatedly told investigators that the attackers had been three or four white men. Mr. Cooper is black.

Meanwhile, a woman told the police (and her statements were later backed up by her sister) that a housemate, a convicted murderer, had shown up with others late on the night of the murders in blood-spattered overalls and driving a station wagon resembling one stolen from the Ryens' home. The women said the housemate was no longer wearing the T-shirt he had on earlier in the evening — the same kind as found near the murders.

A hatchet like one of the murder weapons was missing from the man's tool chest, and a friend of his confessed to a fellow prisoner that he had participated in the killings. The women gave the bloody overalls to the police — who threw them out, apparently because they didn't fit their narrative that Cooper was the killer.

There was no reliable evidence against Cooper. But he had escaped from a minimum-security prison (he walked away) where he was serving a burglary sentence and had holed up in an empty house near the Ryens' home. A court suggested that he had killed the Ryens to steal their station wagon — although it is thought to have been parked in front of the house with the keys in it. And when the car was found, it appeared that three people with bloody clothing had sat in it.

One fundamental factor in this case is Cooper's race, and this case is a microcosm of racial injustice in the United States. The police seemed predisposed to believe the worst of a black man; Cooper was subjected to racist taunts as his case unfolded; and Democratic and Republican politicians alike have shown themselves inclined to avert their eyes, even if this leaves an innocent man on death row.

As governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to act. Kamala Harris, who was state attorney general and is now a U.S. senator, was unhelpful. Governor Brown is reviewing the case, but previously as attorney general exhibited little interest.

Cooper and his lawyers are not asking for a pardon right now, or even for a commutation to life imprisonment. They're simply asking Governor Brown to order a review of the case with new DNA testing (critical testing has never been done) to indicate whether Cooper is likely guilty or innocent. They will even pay for the testing, because they believe it will both exonerate Cooper and implicate the real killers.

"We're not saying let Kevin out of jail now, we're not saying pardon him," noted one of his pro bono lawyers, Norman Hile. "We're saying, let's find out if he's innocent."

This case is a national embarrassment. It appears that an innocent man was railroaded, in part because he is black, and the government won't even allow crucial DNA testing.

Governor Brown, will you act?

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5) The Car Was Repossessed, but the Debt Remains
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and MICHAEL CORKERYJUNE 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/business/dealbook/car-loan-subprime.html?hp&action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=
top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

More than a decade after Yvette Harris’s 1997 Mitsubishi was repossessed, she is still paying off her car loan.

She has no choice. Her auto lender took her to court and won the right to seize a portion of her income to cover her debt. The lender has so far been able to garnish $4,133 from her paychecks — a drain that at one point forced Ms. Harris, a single mother who lives in the Bronx, to go on public assistance to support her two sons.

“How am I still paying for a car I don’t have?” she asked.

For millions of Americans like Ms. Harris who have shaky credit and had to turn to subprime auto loans with high interest rates and hefty fees to buy a car, there is no getting out.

Many of these auto loans, it turns out, have a habit of haunting people long after their cars have been repossessed.

The reason: Unable to recover the balance of the loans by repossessing and reselling the cars, some subprime lenders are aggressively suing borrowers to collect what remains — even 13 years later.

Ms. Harris’s predicament goes a long way toward explaining how lenders, working hand in hand with auto dealers, have made billions of dollars extending high-interest loans to Americans on the financial margins.

These are people desperate enough to take on thousands of dollars of debt at interest rates as high as 24 percent for one simple reason: Without a car, they have no way to get to work or to doctors.

With their low credit scores, buying or leasing a new car is not an option. And when all the interest and fees of a subprime loan are added up, even a used car with mechanical defects and many miles on the odometer can end up costing more than a new car.

Subprime lenders are willing to take a chance on these risky borrowers because when they default, the lenders can repossess their cars and persuade judges in 46 states to give them the power to seize borrowers’ paychecks to cover the balance of the car loan.

Now, with defaults rising, federal banking regulators and economists are worried how the strain of these loans will spill over into the broader economy.

For low-income Americans, the fallout could, in some ways, be worse than the mortgage crisis.

With mortgages, people could turn in the keys to their house and walk away. But with auto debt, there is increasingly no exit. Repossession, rather than being the end, is just the beginning.

“Low-income earners are shackled to this debt,” said Shanna Tallarico, a consumer lawyer with the New York Legal Assistance Group.

There are no national tallies of how many borrowers face the collection lawsuits, known within the industry as deficiency cases. But state records show that the courts are becoming flooded with such lawsuits.

For example, the large subprime lender Credit Acceptance has filed more than 17,000 lawsuits against borrowers in New York alone since 2010, court records show. And debt buyers — companies that scoop up huge numbers of soured loans for pennies on the dollar — bring their own cases, breathing new life into old bills.

Portfolio Recovery Associates, one of the nation’s largest debt buyers, purchased about $30.2 million of auto deficiencies in the first quarter of this year, up from $411,000 just a year earlier.

One of the people Credit Acceptance sued is Nagham Jawad, a refugee from Iraq, who moved to Syracuse after her father was killed. Soon after settling into her new home in 2009, Ms. Jawad took out a loan for $5,900 and bought a used car.

After only a few months on the road, the transmission on the 10-year-old Chevy Tahoe gave out. The vehicle was in such bad shape that her lender didn’t bother to repossess it when Ms. Jawad, 39, fell behind on payments.

“These are garbage cars sold at outrageous interest rates,” said her lawyer, Gary J. Pieples, director of the consumer law clinic at the Syracuse University College of Law.

The value of any car typically starts to decline the moment it leaves the dealer’s lot. In the subprime market, however, the value of the cars is often beside the point.

A dealership in Queens refused to cancel Theresa Robinson’s loan of nearly $8,000 and give her a refund for a car that broke down days after she drove it off the lot.

Instead, Ms. Robinson, a Staten Island resident who is physically disabled and was desperate for a car to get to her doctors’ appointments, was told to pick a different car from the lot.

The second car she selected — a 2005 Chrysler Pacifica — eventually broke down as well. Unable to afford the loan payments after sinking thousands of dollars into repairs, Ms. Robinson defaulted.

Her subprime lender took her to court and won the right to garnish her income from babysitting her grandson to cover her loan payments.

Ms. Robinson and her lawyer, Ms. Tallarico, are now fighting to get the judgment overturned.

“Essentially, the dealers are not selling cars. They are selling bad loans,” said Adam Taub, a lawyer in Detroit who has defended consumers in hundreds of these cases.

Many lawyers assisting poor borrowers like Ms. Robinson say they learn about the lawsuits only after a judge has issued a decision in favor of the lender.

Most borrowers can’t afford lawyers and don’t show up to court to challenge the lawsuits. That means the collectors win many cases, transforming the debts into judgments they can use to garnish wages.

The lenders argue that they are just recouping through the courts what they are legally owed. They also argue that subprime auto lending meets an important need.

And collecting on the debt is a critical part of the business. The first item on the quarterly earnings of Credit Acceptance, the large subprime auto lender, is not the amount of loans it makes, but what it expects to collect on the debt.

The company, for example, expects a 72 percent collection rate on loans made in 2014 — the year that a used 2009 Volkswagen Tiguan was repossessed from Nina Lysloff of Ypsilanti, Mich.

With all the interest and fees on her Credit Acceptance loan factored in, the car ended up costing her $28,383. Ms. Lysloff could have bought a brand-new Volkswagen Tiguan for $22,149, according to Kelley Blue Book.

When Ms. Lysloff fell behind, the trade-in value on the car was a fraction of what she still owed. Last year, Credit Acceptance sued her for $15,755.

The strategy at Credit Acceptance, which has a market value of $4.4 billion, is yielding big profits. The Michigan company said its return on equity, a measure of profitability, was 31 percent last year — more than four times Bank of America’s return.

Credit Acceptance did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of the people who got subprime loans lacked enough income to qualify for any loan.

U.S. Bank is pursuing Tara Pearson for the $9,339 left after her 2011 Hyundai Accent was stolen and she could not pay the fee to get it from the impound lot. When she purchased the car in 2015 at a dealership in Winchester, Ky., Ms. Pearson said, she explained that her only income was about $722 from Social Security.

Her loan application listed things differently. Her employer was identified as “S.S.I.,” and her income was put at $2,750, court records show.

Citing continuing litigation, U.S. Bank declined to comment about Ms. Pearson.

Auto lending was one of the few types of credit that did not dry up during the financial crisis. It now stands at more than $1.1 trillion.

Despite many signs that the market is overheating, securities tied to the loans are so profitable — yielding twice as much as certain Treasury securities — that they remain a sought-after investment on Wall Street.

“The dog keeps eating until its stomach explodes,” said Daniel Zwirn, who runs Arena, a hedge fund that has avoided subprime auto investments.

Some lenders are pulling back from making new loans. Subprime auto lending reached a 10-year low in the first quarter. But for those borrowers already stuck with debt, there is no end in sight.

Ms. Harris, the single mother from the Bronx, said that even after her wages had been garnished and she paid an additional $2,743 on her own, her lender was still seeking to collect about $6,500.

“It’s been a nightmare,” she said.

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6) Why Is the U.S. Killing So Many Civilians in Syria and Iraq?
By MICAH ZENKOJUNE 19, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/isis-syria-iraq-civilian-casualties.html?action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=
opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Two weeks ago, the American military finally acknowledged what nongovernmental monitoring groups had claimed for months: The United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State since August 2014 has been killing Iraqi and Syrian civilians at astounding rates in the four months since President Trump assumed office. The result has been a “staggering loss of civilian life,” as the head of the United Nations’ independent Commission of Inquiry into the Syrian civil war said last week.

“At least 484 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition strikes,” the United States Central Command, or Centcom, the military command responsible for the Middle East, said in a June 2 statement. Four months earlier, Centcom had said at least 199 civilians had been killed up to that point in the bombing campaign. Estimates by independent monitors are much higher. Airwars, a watchdog group, says coalition airstrikes have killed nearly 4,000 civilians.

The civilian death toll has risen mainly because the battle has moved deeper into major cities. But even as the civilian death toll ticks upward, the American military has relaxed oversight, investigation and accountability on civilian casualties. Finding out the reasons for these tragic mistakes, seeing what can be learned from them and enforcing the American military’s own standards could save thousands of lives.

Mr. Trump has given the military “total authorization” to decide how, and how much, force will be used, authority that was more closely held by the Obama White House. But Secretary of Defense James Mattis insisted on May 28 that the rules of engagement have not changed. “There is no relaxation of our intention to protect the innocent,” he said.

One reason for the huge increase in noncombatant deaths is that the United States is dropping more bombs — a more than 20 percent increase from the last four months of the Obama presidency to the first four under Mr. Trump.

Also, more strikes have occurred in populated areas, like Mosul, the Islamic State’s last stronghold in Iraq. A 500-pound bomb aimed at two snipers there detonated stored explosives, which collapsed a building and killed 105 Iraqi civilians on March 17, according to Centcom. Since the Islamic State is using residential buildings as command posts, storage depots and fighting positions, noncombatant deaths are more likely.

Yet far more troubling factors have emerged.

Even as the American military has accelerated its bombing, there is no independent assessment of the intelligence used to identify targets. Brig. Gen. Richard Coe, who investigated a mistaken attack on a Syrian military convoy in September, acknowledged that there was no “red team” to critique the decision-making process, a common approach in many commands. “Each person is expected to do that on their own,” General Coe said, “and then, in the process, funnel up the pros and cons to decision makers.” Individuals immersed in identifying enemy targets cannot simultaneously evaluate their own judgments.

Until June 13, the American military had only two people investigating Iraqi and Syrian civilian casualties full time. There now are seven full-time investigators, still a meager commitment given that around 10,000 troops are stationed in Qatar at the command’s headquarters for the air war. A dozen people investigated such claims at the height of the Afghanistan surge in 2011. If the military were concerned about civilian deaths, more investigators with training and experience in targeting would be assigned to those teams.

There is also no longer any public accountability. On May 26, an American military press officer confirmed that the Pentagon will no longer acknowledge when its own aircraft are responsible for civilian casualty incidents; rather they will be hidden under the umbrella of the “coalition.” The United States military has been responsible for 95 percent of airstrikes in Syria and 68 percent in Iraq. Centcom should own up to its own actions rather than dispersing responsibility.

Congress has shown little interest in identifying the root causes of civilian deaths, holding commanders or lower-level officers accountable, or ensuring that the lessons learned from mistaken strikes are integrated into future operations. Congress could exercise its oversight role by mandating Pentagon reporting about what steps it has taken to mitigate civilian harm, funding additional awareness training for American and other coalition officers, and holding public hearings with senior civilian and military officials.

Since the air war began some 22,000 airstrikes ago, military officials have repeatedly claimed that they “do everything possible” to protect civilians. Making good on that promise is not only the right thing to do — it is also strategically vital to the longer-term effectiveness of the fight against terrorism.

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7) U.K. Didn’t Ban Cladding Used on Grenfell Tower, Experts Say
"Critics of the material have warned for years that aluminum surface sheets can melt in a fire, after which flames could race through flammable insulation. 'It is like you have got a high-rise building and you are encasing it in kerosene,' said Edwin Galea, director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich. 'It is insanity, pure and simple.'"
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CEYLAN YEGINSUJUNE 19, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/world/europe/uk-grenfell-tower-london-fire.html?hp&action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=
top-news&WT.nav=top-news

LONDON — In the aftermath of Britain’s deadliest fire in decades, two senior officials sought to deflect blame from the government over the weekend by arguing that the type of building material believed to have spread flames rapidly up the 24-story Grenfell Tower had been banned under national fire safety regulations.

But experts on British fire safety rules say that the material, used as exterior cladding, in fact complied with regulations. Other countries, including the United States, have placed stricter restrictions on how such materials can be used, but Britain had not yet done so, they said.

The question of whether the cladding complied with national regulations — and whether those regulations were too lax — is a central part of the investigation into the horrific blaze last week. It will help determine how much blame falls on the government, and how much is assigned to the tower’s owners or builders.

The toll rose on Monday to 79 confirmed or presumed dead and was expected to climb further, making the fire Britain’s deadliest in decades, perhaps since the early 20th century. It broke out at Grenfell Tower in West London early on Wednesday, lasted for six hours, and incinerated the building. Hundreds were left homeless. The government has announced a formal public inquiry, and a criminal investigation has been opened.

The material in the exterior cladding consisted of insulation sandwiched between two sheets of aluminum. The type used at Grenfell Tower is made under the Reynobond name by Arconic, a company spun off from the aluminum giant Alcoa last year. It was installed around the tower, which was built in 1974, in a renovation completed last year.

Critics of the material have warned for years that aluminum surface sheets can melt in a fire, after which flames could race through flammable insulation. “It is like you have got a high-rise building and you are encasing it in kerosene,” said Edwin Galea, director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich. “It is insanity, pure and simple.”

Such a runaway blaze appears to have been precisely what happened at Grenfell Tower. The flames engulfed the 24-story building in a matter of minutes, moving from the outside inward and emitting a dark smoke characteristic of burning insulation.

Recriminations over the failure to prevent the disaster and the sluggish response have contributed to a political crisis for Prime Minister Theresa May, whose Conservative Party lost its majority in a parliamentary election six days before the fire.

If Britain had already banned the material that appears to have spread the fire — as the ministers asserted on Sunday — that would move responsibility for the disaster away from the government and point instead to possible crimes by the tower’s owners and their contractors.

The use of the material is a sensitive issue for the British government because the United States and other countries years ago banned its application in tall buildings on the grounds that it was a fire hazard. In recent years, a series of highly publicized fires in the United Arab Emirates and Australia has called attention to the problem and spurred more countries to adopt similar restrictions.

Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a television interview on Sunday that he believed that Britain had done the same.

“My understanding is the cladding in question, this flammable cladding which is banned in Europe and the U.S., is also banned here,” Mr. Hammond said in an interview with Andrew Marr of the BBC. “So there are two separate questions. One: Are our regulations correct, do they permit the right kind of materials and ban the wrong kind of materials? The second question is: Were they correctly complied with?”

He added: “That will be a subject that the inquiry will look at. It will also be a subject that the criminal investigation will be looking at.”

Greg Hands, the minister for trade and investment, said in a separate interview with Sky News on Sunday that “my understanding is that the cladding that was reported was not in accordance with building regulations.”

But several British experts on fire safety said that the existing rules had not, in fact, banned use of the cladding, even in high-rise buildings like Grenfell Tower. The critical building regulation — clause 13 of Appendix A of Document B — requires only that the exterior “surface of a composite product” used as exterior cladding “must be composed throughout of materials of limited combustibility.”

The sheets of aluminum believed to have been the “surface” around flammable insulation at Grenfell Tower would pass this test, even though the surfaces could, and did, melt in a fire.

“This is where it all falls down,” Arnold E. Tarling, a chartered surveyor and expert on fire prevention who is a member of the Association for Specialist Fire Protection, said in an interview. “The surface melts and it burns like a furnace.” But the cladding nonetheless “complied with the regulations,” he said.

The United States and other countries allow only low buildings to use such cladding because of the fire hazard. British regulations may seek to limit the spread of the flames by requiring builders to divide potentially flammable cladding with fireproof barriers at horizontal or vertical intervals. But engineers and experts say that such barriers have proven ineffective in other fires around the world. The flames can often circumvent them.

Along with the cladding, investigators are looking, among much else, at the absence of sprinklers and a centralized alarm system in the building, which is not uncommon for British apartment blocks as old as Grenfell Tower; and guidance that urged residents to “stay put” and await instructions if a fire broke out in someone else’s unit.

Many residents of the tower block are still unaccounted for, and the police have said that because of the intensity of the fire, some remains may never be identified.

“As of this morning, I’m afraid to say there are now 79 people who we believe are either dead or missing, and I sadly have to presume they are dead,” Commander Stuart Cundy said in remarks to journalists on Monday. Of those fatalities, he said the police had formally identified five victims.

Mrs. May’s office said that the terms of reference for the inquiry were being drafted, and that Mrs. May wanted answers quickly. The prime minister’s office has also contacted all local authorities in England asking them to identify any safety concerns in light of the tragedy, it said. It added that Mrs. May did not support a proposal by the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, to seize unoccupied properties to rehouse survivors of the fire.

Mrs. May has now pledged 5 million pounds, or about $6.4 million, to help the victims of the fire. And on Sunday, the British government took direct control of the emergency response, sidelining local officials whose response had been criticized as slow and disorganized.

Even so, residents complained on Monday about a lack of coordination among officials, emergency services and various aid groups.

“Nobody is giving us the information we need about our missing family members or about how long we will spend sleeping in hotels,” said Ibrahim Arian, whose uncle Saber Neda is among those feared dead in the fire.

The building’s residents were largely people of modest means, many from troubled countries like Sudan, Eritrea and Syria. The contrast between the deprivation of the building and the wealth of Kensington and Chelsea, one of London’s richest boroughs, has been a subject of intense debate.

Abdur Rahman, chief executive of Al Manaar, a Muslim community center that is providing refuge and support to survivors and their families, said that coordination between had improved in recent days and that help desks had been set up in the center to help displaced residents claim emergency relief funds, find lawyers and meet with psychologists.

But survivors said the delay in finding out for certain about their loved ones was topmost in their minds.

“As the days are going past, hope is fading, but it’s not completely lost,” said Leila Amani, who survived fire and has been given temporary shelter at a hotel in the Earl’s Court neighborhood. “The first thing the people need to know is whether their family members are dead or alive. Nothing else matters at this point.”

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8) Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families
By AZAM AHMED and NICOLE PERLROTHJUNE 19, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/world/americas/mexico-spyware-anticrime.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s most prominent human rights lawyers, journalists and anti-corruption activists have been targeted by advanced spyware sold to the Mexican government on the condition that it be used only to investigate criminals and terrorists.

The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappear ance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy.

Since 2011, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased about $80 million worth of spyware created by an Israeli cyberarms manufacturer. The software, known as Pegasus, infiltrates smartphones to monitor every detail of a person’s cellular life — calls, texts, email, contacts and calendars. It can even use the microphone and camera on phones for surveillance, turning a target’s smartphone into a personal bug.

The company that makes the software, the NSO Group, says it sells the tool exclusively to governments, with an explicit agreement that it be used only to battle terrorists or the drug cartels and criminal groups that have long kidnapped and killed Mexicans.

But according to dozens of messages examined by The New York Times and independent forensic analysts, the software has been used against some of the government’s most outspoken critics and their families, in what many view as an unprecedented effort to thwart the fight against the corruption infecting every limb of Mexican society.

“We are the new enemies of the state,” said Juan E. Pardinas, the general director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, who has pushed anti-corruption legislation. His iPhone, along with his wife’s, was targeted by the software, according to an independent analysis. “Ours is a society where democracy has been eroded,” he said.

The deployment of sophisticated cyberweaponry against citizens is a snapshot of the struggle for Mexico itself, raising profound legal and ethical questions for a government already facing severe criticism for its human rights record. Under Mexican law, only a federal judge can authorize the surveillance of private communications, and only when officials can demonstrate a sound basis for the request.

It is highly unlikely that the government received judicial approval to hack the phones, according to several former Mexican intelligence officials. Instead, they said, illegal surveillance is standard practice.

“Mexican security agencies wouldn’t ask for a court order, because they know they wouldn’t get one,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a former analyst at the Center for Investigation and National Security, Mexico’s intelligence agency and one of the government agencies that use the Pegasus spyware. “I mean, how could a judge authorize surveillance of someone dedicated to the protection of human rights?”

“There, of course, is no basis for that intervention, but that is besides the point,” he added. “No one in Mexico ever asks for permission to do so.”

The hacking attempts were highly personalized, striking critics with messages designed to inspire fear — and get them to click on a link that would provide unfettered access to their cellphones.

Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most famous journalists, was targeted by a spyware operator posing as the United States Embassy in Mexico, instructing her to click on a link to resolve an issue with her visa. The wife of Mr. Pardinas, the anti-corruption activist, was targeted with a message claiming to offer proof that he was having an extramarital affair.

For others, imminent danger was the entry point, like a message warning that a truck filled with armed men was parked outside Mr. Pardinas’s home.

“I think that any company that sells a product like this to a government would be horrified by the targets, of course, which don’t seem to fall into the traditional role of criminality,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, which examined the hacking attempts.

The Mexican government acknowledges gathering intelligence against legitimate suspects in accordance with the law. “As in any democratic government, to combat crime and threats against national security the Mexican government carries out intelligence operations,” it said in a statement.

But the government “categorically denies that any of its members engages in surveillance or communications operations against defenders of human rights, journalists, anti-corruption activists or any other person without prior judicial authorization.”

The Mexican government’s deployment of spyware has come under suspicion before, including hacking attempts on political opponents and activists fighting corporate interests in Mexico.

Still, there is no ironclad proof that the Mexican government is responsible. The Pegasus software does not leave behind the hacker’s individual fingerprints. Even the software maker, the NSO Group, says it cannot determine who, exactly, is behind specific hacking attempts.

But cyberexperts can verify when the software has been used on a target’s phone, leaving them with few doubts that the Mexican government, or some rogue actor within it, was involved.

“This is pretty much as good as it gets,” said Bill Marczak, another senior researcher at Citizen Lab, who confirmed the presence of NSO code on several phones belonging to Mexican journalists and activists.

Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that cybercriminals somehow got their hands on the software, the NSO Group says, because the technology can be used only by the government agency where it is installed.

The company is part of a growing number of digital spying businesses that operate in a loosely regulated space. The market has picked up in recent years, particularly as companies like Apple and Facebook start encrypting their customers’ communications, making it harder for government agencies to conduct surveillance.

Increasingly, governments have found that the only way to monitor mobile phones is by using private businesses like the NSO Group that exploit little-known vulnerabilities in smartphone software. The company has, at times, operated its businesses under different names. One of them, OSY Technologies, paid Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, more than $40,000 to be an advisory board member from May 2016 until January, according to his public financial disclosures.

Before selling to governments, the NSO Group says, it vets their human rights records. But once the company licenses the software and installs its hardware inside intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the company says, it has no way of knowing how its spy tools are used — or whom they are used against.

The company simply bills governments based on the total number of surveillance targets. To spy on 10 iPhone users, for example, the company charges $650,000 on top of a flat $500,000 installation fee, according to NSO marketing proposals reviewed by The New York Times.

Even when the NSO Group learns that its software has been abused, there is only so much it can do, the company says, arguing that it cannot simply march into intelligence agencies, remove its hardware and take back its spyware.

“When you’re selling AK-47s, you can’t control how they’ll be used once they leave the loading docks,” said Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer at Lookout, a mobile security company.

Rather, the NSO Group relies on its customers to cooperate in a review, then turns over the findings to the appropriate governmental authority — in effect, leaving governments to police themselves.

Typically, the company’s only recourse is to slowly cut off a government’s access to the spy tools over the course of months, or even years, by ceasing to provide new software patches, features and updates. But in the case of Mexico, the NSO Group has not condemned or even acknowledged any abuse, despite repeated evidence that its spy tools have been deployed against ordinary citizens and their families.

From Hope to Intimidation

Journalists, human rights defenders and anti-corruption campaigners have long faced enormous risks in Mexico. For decades, they have been followed, harassed, threatened and even killed for their work, occupational hazards more common in authoritarian states than in countries in good standing with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as Mexico is.

But when President Enrique Peña Nieto came into office in 2012, promising to lift Mexico to its rightful place on the world stage, there was an inkling of hope that the nation’s democracy was coming into its own.

His party passed a list of badly needed changes, taking aim at the failing education system and moving to enhance the transparency of Mexico’s bureaucracy. Competition in some core industries, like telecommunications, has increased.

But by 2014, much of the early promise of the Peña Nieto administration was dashed by the crises subsuming it, including the mysterious disappearance of 43 teaching students after a clash with the police, and accusations that the president and his wife got a special deal on a multimillion-dollar home from a government contractor.

The scandals have left an enduring mark on the president’s reputation. After a stunning rise built on a perfectly crafted image — a young, energetic president working across party lines, the embodiment of a new Mexico — Mr. Peña Nieto was suddenly recast as an out-of-touch, corrupt politician with abysmal approval ratings.

In no small part, that fall was thanks to the Mexican journalists who broke news of the scandals, as well as the lawyers and activists who refused to let the country forget about them.

“You have to remember this was a government that went from setting the agenda to being entirely reactive,” said Carlos Loret de Mola, a news anchor for Televisa who has some of the best sources inside the Mexican government.

Mr. Loret de Mola, who received at least eight messages laced with NSO software, added, “They looked at journalists and thought, ‘They are bringing these things out and embarrassing us, so it’s better if we spy on them.’”

Mexico is still a far cry from Turkey, which jails more journalists than any other nation in the world. It is hardly China, an authoritarian state where critics are silenced and a Western-style free press has been cast as a political peril by the government. But Mexico is in crisis on these fronts all the same.

More journalists were killed in Mexico last year than during any other year this century, and 2017 is off to an even worse start. Government critics are routinely harassed and threatened, and now they are being targeted with incredibly sophisticated software.

“The fact that the government is using high-tech surveillance against human rights defenders and journalists exposing corruption, instead of those responsible for those abuses, says a lot about who the government works for,” said Luis Fernando García, the executive director of R3D, a digital rights group in Mexico that has helped identify multiple abuses of Pegasus in Mexico. “It’s definitely not for the people.”

‘About Getting Revenge’

Perhaps no journalist in Mexico has done as much to damage the reputation of the president than Carmen Aristegui. And few have paid as dearly for it.

In 2014, she and her team broke the scandal of the so-called Casa Blanca, or White House, a story of real estate intrigue that involved a special deal handed to Mexico’s first lady, Angélica Rivera, by a major government contractor close to the president.

The story reached a worldwide audience and forced the president’s wife to surrender the house, presenting the Mexican government with the sort of ethical quandary that in a different country might result in a congressional inquiry or the appointment of an independent prosecutor.

Instead, the president was cleared of wrongdoing by a prosecutor who had worked closely with his campaign team, while Ms. Aristegui lost her job. That moment marked the beginning of a sustained campaign of harassment and defamation against her: lawsuits, break-ins at her offices, threats to her safety and the monitoring of her movements.

“It’s been about getting revenge for the piece,” she said. “There’s really no other way to see it.”

So when she began receiving text messages in 2015 from unknown numbers, instructing her to click on a link, she was suspicious. One message asked for her help in locating a missing child. Another alerted her to sudden charge on her credit card. And she received a text message purportedly from the American Embassy about a problem with her visa. Impersonating an American government official is a possible violation of United States law.

When the messages failed to entice her to click on the links and inadvertently download the software, they grew increasingly strident, including one warning that she could be imprisoned. Several came from the same phone number, leaving a record of the spyware operator’s sloppiness.

Still, the spyware operators pressed on. Starting as early as March, they began targeting Ms. Aristegui’s then-16-year-old son, Emilio, who was living in the United States at the time. Some of the texts were similar to the ones she had received. Others were made-up headlines about Ms. Aristegui, sent from what appeared to be a news agency.

“The only reason they could be going after my son is in the hopes of finding something against me, to damage me,” she said.

Ms. Aristegui is the embodiment of the hope — and the crushing limitations — for a free media in Mexico. Though she was fired over what her employer called internal disagreements, she continued publishing on her own, eventually drawing enough of an audience to sustain a team of reporters.

But the work has taken its toll. In one lawsuit, filed by the president of her former employer, a judge cited Ms. Aristegui last November for her “excessive use of freedom of speech.”

Her website , Aristegui Noticias, has been hacked numerous times, including on the eve of publishing a major investigation into the massacre of more than a dozen civilians by the federal police.

And her offices were broken into last November. So brazen were the assailants that they didn’t bother wearing masks. Nor did they steal much — one computer, a watch and a bag hanging from the back of a chair. Their faces and fingerprints were captured on cameras in the office. Still, no one has been caught.

The threats, harassment, even the spying, all of it she channels into work.

“For me, I have opted to believe that my public work is what will best protect me,” she said. “The great challenge for journalists and citizens is that the fear serve us, and not conquer us.”

Texts Laced With Menace

It was Dec. 21, 2015, and Mr. Pardinas was at the beach with his family, trying to enjoy the start of his Christmas vacation. But his phone kept buzzing, at first with calls from lawyers, and then with an odd text message.

It had been a long few months in an even longer campaign: to pass an unprecedented law forcing Mexico’s public servants to disclose their financial conflicts of interest.

In November, he had presented a study on the costs of corruption in Mexico, confirming with facts and figures something that nearly all Mexicans knew in their hearts — that corruption was crippling the country.

He followed it up with media interviews, poking fun at the Mexican government’s embarrassing response to corruption. He joked that it probably spent more money on coffee and cookies than on the office in charge of prosecuting graft.

The study, the interviews, a seemingly endless gantlet of meetings with politicians — it all laid the groundwork for the new law, which Mr. Pardinas, a private citizen directing a public policy group, was helping to write.

So even as Christmas approached and his family relaxed in the coastal town of Puerto Vallarta, Mr. Pardinas was busily consulting lawyers on the final draft, which he had just over a month to submit.

And then a message: “My father died at dawn, we are devastated, I’m sending you the details of the wake, I hope you can come.” Attached was a link.

Mr. Pardinas thought it odd that whoever had sent such a personal text was not even among the contacts in his phone. He showed his wife the message, and decided to ignore it.

Things only picked up from there, both on his proposed law and the odd messages. The government roundly ignored his bill, until he and others gathered more than 630,000 signatures supporting it.

Mr. Pardinas’s tone grew bolder. He told one radio host that “for the government of Mexico, anti-corruption measures are like garlic to a vampire.”

Then came another text message. This one appeared to be from the news outlet Uno TV, which sends daily news headlines to cellphone users across the country. The headline struck him: “The History of Corruption Within the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness.” It was particularly alarming because that was his organization.

He declined once more to click on the link, suspecting foul play. More text messages came, including the next day. Only this time, having failed with Mr. Pardinas, they tried his wife.

The message, sent from the same news headline service, said that leaked videos showed Mr. Pardinas having sexual relations with a member of his staff. It was also sent to a colleague.

Mr. Pardinas called his wife, telling her that she appeared to be part of a broader harassment effort. “Oh, it’s these people again,” she responded.

The campaign to pass the law continued, and the bill made it through Congress relatively unscathed. But the Senate decided to add an extra provision: Everyone who worked for a company that received government money would also have to disclose their interests and assets. That meant the bill would cover more than 30 million people.

The president vetoed the bill, saying it needed more discussion, essentially kicking the can down the road.

Mr. Pardinas continued his broadsides in interviews, naming obstructive lawmakers and well-connected companies that benefited from government money. Few activists go so far as to name names in interviews, but Mr. Pardinas, who holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, plowed ahead anyway.

The initiative seemed doomed. Yet another message arrived, on Aug. 1, this one laced with menace: “Listen, outside of your house is a truck with two armed guys, I took their photo look at them and be careful.”

Mr. Pardinas, who was at work when this message came, once again declined to take the bait. But he did call his wife, again, asking her to look out their window to see if there was a truck parked outside. There was not.

“By the end, my wife had Olympic-style training in this hacking stuff,” Mr. Pardinas said.

‘It Comes With the Territory’

Mario E. Patrón was on edge. The conference table was packed with fellow human rights defenders, including the United Nations commissioner for human rights in Mexico. Everyone was there to discuss the bombshell expected to drop.

An international panel brought to Mexico to investigate the haunting disappearance of 43 teaching students was releasing its final report the next day, at the end of April 2016. The findings, Mr. Patrón knew, were going to be brutal.

The government would be accused of negligence, incompetence, even malfeasance in its handling of the case. Like others in the room, Mr. Patrón, whose organization represents the parents of the missing students, was wondering how the government would respond.

His phone buzzed and he glanced at the screen. “THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO GETS OUT IN FRONT OF THE GIEI,” the text message read, using the acronym for the international panel. It seemed like the news he had been waiting for.

He showed the message to his colleague, then clicked on the link. But instead of an article or a news release, it simply redirected him to a blank page. Confused, he left the meeting and raced to his office to begin making calls to see what the government had in store.

And like that, he fell into their trap.

Mr. Patrón is the executive director of the Miguel Augustí n Pro Juá rez Human Rights Center, perhaps the most highly respected human rights group in Mexico. The group focuses on the nation’s most serious cases of human rights abuses, making it a nettlesome critic of the government.

In addition to Mr. Patrón, two other lawyers for the group were targeted with the software: Santiago Aguirre, the primary lawyer representing the families of the missing students, and Stephanie E. Brewer, a Harvard-educated American lawyer who has worked for the group since 2007.

“We have always suspected they spied on us and listened to us,” Mr. Patrón said. “But to have evidence that we are victims of actual surveillance — it confirms that we are under threat. And that the government is willing to use illegal measures to try and stop us.”

Beyond the missing students, Centro Prodh, as the group is called, is representing one of the few survivors of a military raid in 2014 in the town of Tlatlaya, where the army stormed a suspected cartel hide-out and killed 22 people.

While pursuing the case, the group unearthed a memorandum ordering the soldiers to kill suspected cartel members, strengthening the argument that the events did not unfold as a firefight, as the military claimed, but were instead extrajudicial executions carried out by the soldiers.

The organization’s clients also include the women of Atenco, a group of 11 university students, activists and market vendors who were arrested by the police more than 10 years ago during protests in the town of San Salvador Atenco and brutally sexually assaulted on the way to prison.

Aside from the grave abuse of power, the case wa s especially sensitive: The governor who ordered the crackdown on the protesters was Enrique Peña Nieto, now the president of Mexico.

From the very beginning, the case was an uphill battle. Arrested on trumped-up charges, some of the women spent more time in prison than the officers who raped them.

Finding no recourse in Mexico, Ms. Brewer and others appealed to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a regional body outside the Mexican judicial system, to review the case. And they waited — for nearly seven years.

Finally, in 2015, the commission found in favor of the women, ordering the government to investigate the case all the way up the chain of command, a directive that would include Mr. Peña Nieto. Ultimately, the case was sent to the Inter-American Court, an independent judiciary with jurisdiction over Mexico, a major blow to the nation’s presidency.

One evening Ms. Brewer was at home, getting ready for bed when a text message arrived. The date practically coincided with the 10-year anniversary of the assaults on the women, an eerie bookend to their decade-long struggle for justice.

On her phone was a provocative question, a taunt even, asking whether anyone defended the soldiers and members of Mexico’s navy who also suffered abuse.

“And you guys that do human rights against this, what about the dignity of them …” The message contained a link, presumably to a news story or a tip.

Intrigued, Ms. Brewer clicked on it. She was directed to a broken link, a telltale sign of the malware.

“It’s just part of defending human rights in Mexico,” she said. “It comes with the territory.”

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9) Grim Echoes for Families: An Officer Shoots and a Jury Acquits
By MITCH SMITH, YAMICHE ALCINDOR and JACK HEALYJUNE 17, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/us/police-shootings-philando-castile.html?rref=
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ST. PAUL — When the verdict came down on Friday — another police officer found not guilty in the killing of another black man — a father 700 miles away, in Oklahoma, felt as if he were watching a sickening replay of his own son’s fate. Other families of those killed in previous police shootings, who happened to be gathered in Detroit for a conference this past week, felt reverberations of their own pain.

And on a street corner here outside the courthouse where a jury acquitted a Minnesota officer in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile last summer, Mr. Castile’s mother, Valerie, vented a bitter frustration shared by many activists. “A murderer gets away,” said Ms. Castile, visibly anguished. “The system in this country continues to fail black people.”

After all of the public scrutiny, nationwide protests and grisly videos of police shootings over the past several years, few officers are criminally charged, and when the rare case is prosecuted, hopes rise that justice will be served. More often than not, officers are not convicted, raising a question: Do divisions widen more between the police and their communities if people view the justice system as having failed than if there had been no prosecution, no deeper look, at all?

About 900 to 1,000 people are fatally shot by police officers in the United States every year, said Philip M. Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University who tracks police shootings. Since 2005, when Mr. Stinson began his tally, just 29 nonfederal law enforcement officers have been convicted in on-duty shootings. Fourteen pleaded guilty, and 15 were convicted by juries. In that time, more officers — 33 — have been arrested or charged with murder or manslaughter but not convicted.

In many of these cases, questions of guilt do not hinge on who fired the fatal shot, but on what officers were thinking when they pulled the trigger.

“As soon as the officer gets on the stand and subjectively says, ‘I was fearing for my life,’ many juries are not going to convict at that point,” Mr. Stinson said. “We’ve seen it over and over again.”

Such was the case in Cincinnati, where prosecutors are retrying a former university police officer on murder charges after a jury failed to reach a verdict on whether to hold him responsible in the shooting death of Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black driver. In Baltimore, the prosecution of six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a fatal spinal cord injury in police custody, ended last year without a single conviction after three officers were acquitted and the state’s attorney dropped all remaining charges against the other three.

And last month in Oklahoma, a jury that included at least four black jurors deliberated for nine hours before acquitting a white police officer, Betty Jo Shelby, in the shooting of Terence Crutcher. He was standing in the street outside his sport utility vehicle, was unarmed and had his hands in the air for much of the fatal confrontation.

When Mr. Crutcher’s father, the Rev. Joey Crutcher, 69, heard about Friday’s verdict, he said, his thoughts turned to his son and parallels between the case in Minnesota and his son’s. “We’ve gone through this time and time again in different cities,” he said. “I’m beginning to think that police have free rein and they can just do whatever they want and they are going to get off.”

Mr. Crutcher said the legal process could take a toll on family members who attend court hoping for justice but must watch videos of their loved one dying again and again. “I relived that night during the course of hearings and during the trial,” he said. “They played over and over again that video where my son was walking with his hands up, and I knew what my son was doing. He was remembering what I told him to do. If you’re stopped by the police, raise your hands and put them on the car.”

Advocates for law enforcement officers said the acquittals were signs of weak cases filed by prosecutors in response to public outcries. Earl Gray, a lawyer for Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who shot Mr. Castile, said the trial against his client had gone forward largely because of political pressure and a flood of attention over a video that Mr. Castile’s girlfriend had streamed live on Facebook in the moments after the shooting. “A lot of publicity was generated” from the video, Mr. Gray said, “which of course caused Ramsey County to charge Officer Yanez.”

But for activists and the 2,000 protesters who gathered in St. Paul on Friday night, the not-guilty verdict was a painful injustice.

Some here took solace that the case had been brought in the first place, especially given earlier cases, like the fatal police shooting of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis in 2015, in which prosecutors decided not to press charges. Others called the trial a show, nothing more. “What else could we have expected?” asked Anthony Newby, a community activist in Minneapolis who said he had cried behind his closed office door after hearing the verdict. “There’s that familiar rage that boils up all the time.”

Mr. Castile’s mother said after the verdict that she had believed her son’s death would be the case to upend the pattern of “not guilties” and deadlocked juries.

The Facebook live video of Mr. Castile’s last, bloody moments after being shot had set off two weeks of protests here over the police’s use of force, and touched off a chorus of demands to prosecute Officer Yanez. When he was charged with manslaughter, legal observers said it appeared to be the first time a Minnesota police officer had been indicted in an on-duty shooting death of a civilian. “This time we didn’t have a man fleeing from the scene,” said Glenda Hatchett, a lawyer for the Castile family. “We didn’t have a man fighting the police. We had a man who was fully compliant, as his mother taught him.”

“I don’t know what more could have been done,” she added.

But the jury’s verdict on the fifth day of deliberations after a three-week trial showed how different the same shooting could appear to protesters gathered outside the State Capitol than to 12 people inside a jury room. Prosecutors and Mr. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, said Mr. Castile had been shot as he reached for his identification. But defense lawyers said Officer Yanez believed that Mr. Castile was reaching for his gun. In a dashboard camera recording before the shooting, Mr. Castile — who was licensed to carry a gun — can be heard calmly informing Officer Yanez about the weapon.

Jeff Roorda, business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers Association, said many officers were paying attention to jury decisions in police trials like Officer Yanez’s. “This isn’t cause for celebration,” he said. “A man’s dead. An officer’s career is over. And a split-second decision turned into tragedy. But again, I think what’s missed in the conversation is that sometimes cops do get it wrong. But there’s a difference between getting it wrong and acting criminally.”

John J. Choi, the elected prosecutor of Ramsey County, defended his decision to bring charges and said he recognized that the verdict would disappoint many who, though skeptical, had decided to give the justice system a chance this time. “There was ample evidence. If the jury wanted to, if they chose to choose those facts, they would have got a conviction,” Mr. Choi said. “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out as the Castile family would have liked. But the process, we can’t control it.”