Friday, March 30, 2018

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2018

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"March For Our Lives" Photo Taken March 24, 2018 San Francisco Civic Center

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JOINING FORCES AGAINST POLICING AND JAILS IN SAN FRANCISCO
A Summit to fight the Prison Industrial Complex

Saturday April 7th, 10am - 3pm
City College, Mission Campus
1125 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

RSVP today. Space limited!
Facebook to stay updated and spread the word!

DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE FLYER

Hosted by the No New SF Jail coalition, this event will bring together organizational partners and community activists working to stop the violence of the prison industrial complex in San Francisco. Summit presenters and participants will discuss interrelated topics such as jail construction, gang injunctions, justice for community members murdered by police, tasers, bail reform, increased policing on our streets, and more. Interactive workshops, trainings, and panel discussions will allow for participants to share information and strategize between campaigns. Our goal is to strengthen connections between our organizations and efforts in order to better address the interlocking impacts of imprisonment, policing, surveillance, courts, and prosecution in San Francisco. Join us!

Lunch provided. Donations accepted.

Current Sponsors Include: Asian Law Caucus, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Communities United Against Violence, Oakland Power Projects, DSA - Justice Committee, American Friends Service Committee, Critical Resistance Oakland, Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

Accessibility: Venue will be wheelchair accessible. Childcare and interpretation provided upon request, please contact us regarding this and other accessibility needs by March 31st.

Sponsorship: Would your organization like to join as a sponsor? Please contact us and fill out this quick survey.

Contact: nosfjail@curbprisonsp ending.org - 5104440484 - http s://nonewsfjail.wordpress.com

_______________________________________________
News mailing list
News@womenprisoners.org
http://womenprisoners.org/mailman/listinfo/news_womenprisoners.org

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Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

By Whitney Webb

WASHINGTON—In the last few years, arguably the most visible and well-publicized march on the U.S. capital has been the "Women's March," a movement aimed at advocating for legislation and policies promoting women's rights as well as a protest against the misogynistic actions and statements of high-profile U.S. politicians. The second Women's March, which took place this past year, attracted over a million protesters nationwide, with 500,000 estimated to have participated in Los Angeles alone.

However, absent from this women's movement has been a public antiwar voice, as its stated goal of "ending violence" does not include violence produced by the state. The absence of this voice seemed both odd and troubling to legendary peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose iconic protest against the invasion and occupation of Iraq made her a household name for many.

Sheehan was taken aback by how some prominent organizers of this year's Women's March were unwilling to express antiwar positions and argued for excluding the issue of peace entirely from the event and movement as a whole. In an interview with MintPress, Sheehan recounted how a prominent leader of the march had told her, "I appreciate that war is your issue Cindy, but the Women's March will never address the war issue as long as women aren't free."

War is indeed Sheehan's issue and she has been fighting against the U.S.' penchant for war for nearly 13 years. After her son Casey was killed in action while serving in Iraq in 2004, Sheehan drew international media attention for her extended protest in front of the Bush residence in Crawford, Texas, which later served as the launching point for many protests against U.S. military action in Iraq.

Sheehan rejected the notion that women could be "free" without addressing war and empire. She countered the dismissive comment of the march organizer by stating that divorcing peace activism from women's issues "ignored the voices of the women of the world who are being bombed and oppressed by U.S. military occupation."

Indeed, women are directly impacted by war—whether through displacement, the destruction of their homes, kidnapping, or torture. Women also suffer uniquely and differently from men in war as armed conflicts often result in an increase in sexual violence against women.

For example, of the estimated half-a-million civilians killed in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, many of them were women and children. In the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, the number of female casualties has been rising on average over 20 percent every year since 2015. In 2014 alone when Israel attacked Gaza in "Operation Protective Edge," Israeli forces, which receives $10 million in U.S. military aid every day, killed over two thousand Palestinians—half of them were women and children. Many of the casualties were pregnant women, who had been deliberately targeted.

Given the Women's March's apparent rejection of peace activism in its official platform, Sheehan was inspired to organize another Women's March that would address what many women's rights advocates, including Sheehan, believe to be an issue central to promoting women's rights.

Dubbed the "Women's March on the Pentagon," the event is scheduled to take place on October 21—the same date as an iconic antiwar march of the Vietnam era—with a mission aimed at countering the "bipartisan war machine." Though men, women and children are encouraged to attend, the march seeks to highlight women's issues as they relate to the disastrous consequences of war.

The effort of women in confronting the "war machine" will be highlighted at the event, as Sheehan remarked that "women have always tried to confront the war-makers," as the mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the men and women in the military, as well as those innocent civilians killed in the U.S.' foreign wars. As a result, the push for change needs to come from women, according to Sheehan, because "we [women] are the only ones that can affect [the situation] in a positive way." All that's missing is an organized, antiwar women's movement.

Sheehan noted the march will seek to highlight the direct relationship between peace activism and women's rights, since "no woman is free until all women are free" and such "freedom also includes the freedom from U.S. imperial plunder, murder and aggression" that is part of the daily lives of women living both within and beyond the United States. Raising awareness of how the military-industrial complex negatively affects women everywhere is key, says Sheehan, as "unless there is a sense of international solidarity and a broader base for feminism, then there aren't going to be any solutions to any problems, [certainly not] if we don't stop giving trillions of dollars to the Pentagon."

Sheehan also urged that, even though U.S. military adventurism has long been an issue and the subject of protests, a march to confront the military-industrial complex is more important now than ever: "I'm not alarmist by nature but I feel like the threat of nuclear annihilation is much closer than it has been for a long time," adding that, despite the assertion of some in the current administration and U.S. military, "there is no such thing as 'limited' nuclear war." This makes "the need to get out in massive numbers" and march against this more imperative than ever.

Sheehan also noted that Trump's presidency has helped to make the Pentagon's influence on U.S. politics more obvious by bringing it to the forefront: "Even though militarism had been under wraps [under previous presidents], Trump has made very obvious the fact that he has given control of foreign policy to the 'generals.'"

Indeed, as MintPress has reported on several occasions, the Pentagon—beginning in March of last year—has been given the freedom to "engage the enemy" at will, without the oversight of the executive branch or Congress. As a result, the deaths of innocent civilians abroad as a consequence of U.S. military action has spiked. While opposing Trump is not the focus of the march, Sheehan opined that Trump's war-powers giveaway to the Pentagon, as well as his unpopularity, have helped to spark widespread interest in the event.

Different wings of the same warbird

Sheehan has rejected accusations that the march is partisan, as it is, by nature, focused on confronting the bipartisan nature of the military-industrial complex. She told MintPress that she has recently come under pressure owing to the march's proximity to the 2018 midterm elections—as some have ironically accused the march's bipartisan focus as "trying to harm the chances of the Democrats" in the ensuing electoral contest.

In response, Sheehan stated that:

"Democrats and Republicans are different wings of the same warbird. We are protesting militarism and imperialism. The march is nonpartisan in nature because both parties are equally complicit. We have to end wars for the planet and for the future. I could really care less who wins in November."

She also noted that even when the Democrats were in power under Obama, nothing was done to change the government's militarism nor to address the host of issues that events like the Women's March have claimed to champion.

"We just got finished with eight years of a Democratic regime," Sheehan told MintPress. "For two of those years, they had complete control of Congress and the presidency and a [filibuster-proof] majority in the Senate and they did nothing" productive except to help "expand the war machine." She also emphasized that this march is in no way a "get out the vote" march for any political party.

Even though planning began less than a month ago, support has been pouring in for the march since it was first announced on Sheehan's website, Cindy Sheehan Soapbox. Encouraged by the amount of interest already received, Sheehan is busy working with activists to organize the events and will be taking her first organizing trip to the east coast in April of this year.

In addition, those who are unable to travel to Washington are encouraged to participate in any number of solidarity protests that will be planned to take place around the world or to plan and attend rallies in front of U.S. embassies, military installations, and the corporate headquarters of war profiteers.

Early endorsers of the event include journalists Abby Martin, Mnar Muhawesh and Margaret Kimberley; Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly; FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley; and U.S. politicians like former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Activist groups that have pledged their support include CodePink, United National Antiwar Coalition, Answer Coalition, Women's EcoPeace and World Beyond War.

Though October is eight months away, Sheehan has high hopes for the march. More than anything else, though, she hopes that the event will give birth to a "real revolutionary women's movement that recognizes the emancipation and liberation of all peoples—and that means [freeing] all people from war and empire, which is the biggest crime against humanity and against this planet." By building "a movement and not just a protest," the event's impact will not only be long-lasting, but grow into a force that could meaningfully challenge the U.S. military-industrial complex that threatens us all. God knows the world needs it.

For those eager to help the march, you can help spread the word through social media by joining the march's Facebook page or following the march's Twitter account, as well as by word of mouth. In addition, supporting independent media outlets—such as MintPress, which will be reporting on the march—can help keep you and others informed as October approaches.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.

—MPN News, February 20, 2018

https://www.mintpressnews.com/cindy-sheehan-and-the-womens-march-on-the-pentagon-a-movement-not-just-a-protest/237835/

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April 1-7: DRONE RESISTANCE WEEK at CREECH AFB

Mark your calendar: Sept. 30-Oct. 6, SHUT DOWN CREECH:

Mass Mobilization to STOP KILLER DRONES.

Join CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, and other activists for a week of resistance in the "killer drone fields" of Creech Air Force Base!

With this week's 50th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, where the U.S. military slaughtered over 500 villagers in Vietnam, it is a time to reflect. The U.S. Killer Drone Program is as covert as ever, but continues to brutally kill people in the poorest communities of the world, as the they go about their daily lives, driving on a road, praying in a mosque, eating with their family, studying in school, attending a wedding party or funeral. The ongoing U.S. drone attacks represent modern day mini-My Lai massacres…relentless and barbaric, "hunting" people who have no ability to defend themselves.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Martin L. King Jr.'s assassination, April 4, I am reminded of his words of truth: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own country..." Sadly, it has only gotten worse. We refuse to adapt to it.

Join us for all or part of the week of peaceful nonviolent resistance.

Stay in the Goddess Temple guest house or bring your tent and gear and sleep under the beautiful Nevada desert skies. Collaborate with activists, and join our daily am & pm vigils during rush hour commute, when thousands of military flood into and out of Creech AFB, a key command center of the U.S. killer drone program. The day hours between vigils allow opportunities for desert walks, camaraderie with other peacemakers, and nature retreats in the beautiful desert….an opportunity for replenishing our souls and brainstorming inspirations for resistance.

Contacts: ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net or EastbayCodepink@gmail.com

Not too late to join us, and hope to see you there!

Maggie, Eleanor, Cecile, Ann Wright, GG, Michael Kerr, Pamela, Mary Dean, Renay, Susan Witka, and Toby

It is so beautiful to see young people in this country rising up to demand an end to gun violence. But what is Donald Trump's response? Instead of banning assault weapons, he wants to give guns to teachers and militarize our schools. But one of the reasons for mass school shootings is precisely because our schools are already militarized. Florida shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was trained by U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) program while he was in high school.

The Armed Services Committees in Congress can stop the JROTC programs in our schools. Tell Senator McCain and Representative Thornberry, of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, to take the war machine out our schools!

Yesterday, Divest from the War Machine coalition member, Pat Elder, was featured on Democracy Now discussing his recent article about the JROTC in our schools. The JROTC teaches children how to shoot weapons. It is often taught by retired soldiers who have no background in teaching. They are allowed to teach classes that are given at least equal weight as classes taught by certified and trained teachers. We are pulling our children away from classes that expand their minds and putting them in classes that teach them how to be killing machines. The JROTC program costs our schools money. It sends equipment. But, the instructors and facilities must be constructed and paid for by the school.

The JROTC puts our children's futures at risk. Children who participate in JROTC shooting programs are exposed to lead bullets from guns. They are at an increased risk when the shooting ranges are inside. The JROTC program is designed to "put a jump start on your military career." Children are funneled into JROTC to make them compliant and to feed the military with young bodies which are prepared to be assimilated into the war machine. Instead of funneling children into the military, we should be channeling them into jobs that support peace and sustainable development.

Tell Senator McCain and Representative Thornberry to take the war machine out of our schools! The JROTC program must end immediately. The money should be directed back into classrooms that educate our children.

The Divest from the War Machine campaign is working to remove our money from the hands of companies that make a killing on killing. We must take on the systems that keep fueling war, death, and destruction around the globe. AND, we must take on the systems that are creating an endless cycle of children who are being indoctrinated at vulnerable ages to become the next killing machine. Don't forget to post this message on Facebook and Twitter.

Onward in divestment,

Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Jodie, Kelly, Kirsten, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Natasha, Paki, Sarah, Sophia and Tighe

P.S. Do you want to do more? Start a campaign to get the JROTC out of your school district or state. Email divest@codepink.org and we'll get you started!

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New Legal Action is a Path to Mumia Abu-

Jamal's Freedom, But a Re-ignited International Mobilization is Critical for Victory.

by Rachel Wolkenstein

For more information:

rachelwolkenstein@gmail.com

www.rachelwolkenstein.net

Rally and March to Free Mumia

Saturday, April 28, 2018, 12:00 Noon

Oscar Grant Plaza, Oakland, CA

Other Regional and International Actions to Free Mumia

Detroit, Michigan: National Conference to Defeat Austerity, Saturday, March 24. 10:00 A.M.—5:00 P.M. St. Matthew's—St. Joseph's Church, 8850 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48202. For more information: www.moratorium-mi.org

Houston, Texas: Banner Drop for Mumia, Monday, March 26, 5:30 P.M.—6:30 P.M. Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement will do a banner drop over Houston's busiest freeway for Mumia, on Dunlavy Bridge, over Highway 59.

New York City: Break Down Walls and Prison Plantation: Mumia, Migrants and Movements for Liberation, Friday, March 23. 6:00 P.M. Community Supper 7:30 PM, Holyrood Episcopal Church, 715 179th Street, New York, NY 10033

Jericho Amnesty Movement 20th Anniversary, Saturday, March 24. Holyrood Episcopal Church, 715 W. 179th St, New York, NY, Dinner from 5:00 P.M.—6:00 P.M. Downstairs Program from 6:30 P.M.—9:00 P.M. in Sanctuary.

Sunday, March 25: March and Rally, Gather 12:00 P.M., U.S. Mission (799 UN Plaza: 1st Ave. and 45th St.), March 1:00 P.M., to Times Square for 2:00 P.M. Rally, Buses to Philadelphia: Leaving NYC March 27, 5:30 A.M. from 147 West 24 St. For information email info@freemumia.com or call 212-330-8029.

Vallejo, CA, Saturday, March 24: 1:00 P.M.—4:00 P.M., Vallejo JFK Library, 505 Santa Clara Street, Vallejo, CA 94590, Contact Info: New Jim Crow Movement (Vallejo), 707-652-8367, withjusticepeace@gmail.com

Toronto, Canada, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!, Saturday, March 24, 1:00 P.M., Across the street from the U.S. Consulate
360 University Avenue, march24freemumia@gmail.com

Johannesburg, South Africa, Sunday, March 25, Freedom Park RDD, Poetry. Hip Hop. Kwaito. Drama. Local Organizer: Pastor Rev, Contact Info: +27 649 240514

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Support Herman Bell

Last week the New York State Board of Parole granted Herman Bell release. Since the Board's decision, there has been significant backlash from the Police Benevolent Association, other unions, Mayor De Blasio and Governor Cuomo. They are demanding that Herman be held indefinitely, the Parole Commissioners who voted for his release be fired, and that people convicted of killing police be left to die in prison.

We want the Governor, policymakers, and public to know that we strongly support the Parole Board's lawful, just and merciful decision. We also want to show support for the recent changes to the Board, including the appointment of new Commissioners and the direction of the new parole regulations, which base release decisions more on who a person is today and their accomplishments while in prison than on the nature of their crime.

Herman has a community of friends, family and loved ones eagerly awaiting his return. At 70 years old and after 45 years inside, it is time for Herman to come home.

Here are four things you can do RIGHT NOW to support Herman Bell:

1- CALL New York State Governor Cuomo's Office NOW
518-474-8390

2-EMAIL New York State Governor Cuomo's Office
https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form

3- TWEET at Governor Cuomo: use the following sample tweet:

"@NYGovCuomo: stand by the Parole Board's lawful & just decision to release Herman Bell. At 70 years old and after more than 40 years of incarceration, his release is overdue. #BringHermanHome."

4- Participate in a CBS poll and vote YES on the Parole Board's decision
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/…/herman-bell-parole-police-ou…/
The poll ends on March 21st. Please do this ASAP!

Script for phone calls and emails:
"Governor Cuomo, my name is __________and I am a resident of . I support the Parole Board's decision to release Herman Bell and urge you and the Board to stand by the decision. I also support the recent appointment of new Parole Board Commissioners, and the direction of the new parole regulations, which base release decisions more on who a person is today than on the nature of their crime committed years ago. Returning Herman to his friends and family will help the heal the many harms caused by crime and decades of incarceration. The Board's decision was just, merciful and lawful, and it will benefit our communities and New York State as a whole."

Thank you for your support and contributions.

With gratitude,
Supporters of Herman Bell and Parole Justice New York

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Tell the Feds: End Draft Registration

This morning, in a small community college classroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a newly formed federal commission scheduled its first public hearing on the future of draft registration in the United States. "The bipartisan, 11-member Commission was created by Congress to review the military selective service process," notes their press release. In addition to eight more (yet to be scheduled) public hearings across the United States over the next two years, the commission has invited feedback via a webform here.

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

We had draft registration resister Edward Hasbrouck on the Courage to Resistpodcast this week to explain what's going on. Edward talks about his own history of going to prison for refusing to register for the draft in 1983, the background on this new federal commission, and he addresses liberal arguments in favor of involuntary service. Edward explains:

When you say, "I'm not willing to be drafted", you're saying, "I'm going to make my own choices about which wars we should be fighting", and when you say, "You should submit to the draft", you're saying, "You should let the politicians decide for you."

What's happening right now is that a National Commission … has been appointed to study the question of whether draft registration should be continued, whether it should be expanded to make women, as well as men register for the draft, whether a draft itself should be started, whether there should be some other kind of Compulsory National Service enacted.

The Pentagon would say, and it's true, they don't want a draft. It's not plan A, but it's always been plan B, and it's always been the assumption that if we can't get enough volunteers, if we get in over our head, if we pick a larger fight than we can pursue, we always have that option in our back pocket that, "If not enough people volunteer, we're just going to go go to the draft, go to the benches, and dragoon enough people to fight these wars."

[This] is the first real meaningful opportunity for a national debate about the draft in decades.

Learn more

COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!

484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland, California 94610 ~ 510-488-3559

www.couragetoresist.org ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

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PACK THE COURT FOR MUMIA

Tuesday, March 27, 8:00 A.M.

Court Hearing

Room 1108, Criminal Justice Center

1301 Filbert Street, Philadelphia

In a court case that could eventually lead to Mumia Abu-Jamal's freedom, Judge Leon Tucker has ordered the District Attorney's office to present new testimony in reference to Ronald Castille. A Status Hearing will take place Feb.26 followed by a court hearing on March 27.

Castille is a former PA Supreme Court

judge who refused to disqualify

Himself when Mumia's case came before the court despite having been the Philadelphia District Attorney during Mumia's prior appeals. The US Supreme Court has ruled such conduct unconstitutional.

The people's movement forced the courts to take Abu-Jamal off death row in 2011 but his freedom was not won. Despite his innocence he was re-sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

As an innocent man, Mumia must be freed! It is even more urgent that he gain his freedom because he is suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, severe itching and other ailments.

International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, International Action Center, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (NYC), Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, Educators for Mumia; Food Not Bombs Solidarity

What you can do:

 Call DA Larry Krasner at (215)686-8000.

Tell him to release all DA and police files on Mumia to the public.

Tell the DA to release Mumia because he's factually innocent.

 Pack the court on 2/26 and 3/27.

Mobilization4Mumia@gmail.com;

215-724-1618;
Donate: https://mobilization4mumia.com/donate-1/

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International Letter in Support of Mumia Abu-Jamal

http://www.prisonradio.org/sites/default/files/ABBREVIATED%20INTL%20LETTER%20DEC%2031%2C%202017.pdf

December 9, 2017
To:
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner From:
Concerned Members of International Community

A CALL TO RELEASE THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY AND POLICE FILES RELEVANT TO MUMIA ABU-JAMAL'S CASEAND TO FREE ABU-JAMAL NOW

We, the undersigned individual and organizational members of the international community concerned with issues of human rights, call your attention to an egregious example of human rights violations in your respective jurisdictions: the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Specifically, we call on you both, key officials with the power to determine Abu-Jamal's fate, to:

Assure that all the District Attorney and police files relevant to Abu-Jamal's case, be released publicly as the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas is reviewing the potential involvement of retired Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille in a conflict of interest when he reviewed Abu Jamal's case as a PA Supreme Court Justice.

Release Abu-Jamal now from his incarceration. That given the mounds of evidence of Abu-Jamal's innocence and even more evidence of police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct, his unjust incarceration, including almost 30 years on death row, his twice near-executions, his prison-induced illness which brought him to the brink of death, and the lack of timely treatment for his hepatitis-C which has left him with a condition, cirrhosis of the liver, which poses a potential threat to his life ... we call for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal now.

Now, Abu-Jamal has a new legal challenge in the Pennsylvania courts on the grounds that PA Supreme Court Justice Ronald Castille had a conflict of interest when he denied Abu-Jamal's appeals from 1998-2014. The new action is based on a precedent setting U.S. Supreme Court decision, Williams v. Pennsylvania, that a judge who had been personally involved in a critical prosecutorial decision violates the defendant's right to an impartial judicial review if he then gets to rule on the case as a State Supreme Court Justice. Castille was the Philadelphia elected District Attorney during Abu-Jamal's first appeal process, after his conviction and death sentence, from 1986-1991. He was a PA Supreme Court Justice from 1994 to 2014, during which time Abu-Jamal's case came before him multiple times.

We demand: Public disclosure of the police and DA files! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!!

To sign onto this letter please email infomumia@gmail.com with the subject line "International Letter for Mumia." Submit your full name as you want it listed and your organizational or professional identification.This identification is critical in a letter of this sort, as names alone carry little leverage.

frantzfanonfoundation@amail.com - 58. rue Daquerre, 75014 Paris. +336 86 78 39 20. frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com

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Major George Tillery

A Case of Gross Prosecutorial Misconduct and Police Corruption

Sexual Favors and Hotel Rooms Provided by Police to Prosecution Fact Witness for Fabricated Testimony During Trial

By Nancy Lockhart, M.J.

August 24, 2016

Corruption in The State of Pennsylvania is being exposed with a multitude of public officials indicted by the US Attorney's office in 2015 and 2016. A lengthy list of extortion, theft, and corruption in public service includes a former Solicitor, Treasurer and Veteran Police Officer U.S. Department of Justice Corruption Prosecutions. On Monday August 15, 2016 Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane was found guilty of all nine counts in a perjury and obstruction case related to a grand jury leak. Pennsylvania's Attorney General Convicted On All Counts - New York Times

Although this is a small sampling of decades long corruption throughout the state of Pennsylvania, Major George Tillery has languished in prison over 31 years because of prosecutorial misconduct and police corruption. Tillery was tried and convicted in 1985 in a trial where prosecutors and police created a textbook criminal story for bogus convictions. William Franklin was charged as a co-conspirator in the shootings, he was tried and convicted in December of 1980, because he refused to lie on Tillery. Franklin is 69 years old according to the PADOC website and has been in prison 36 years.

Major Tillery Is Not Represented by an Attorney and Needs Your Assistance to Retain One. Donate to Major Tillery's Legal Defense FundMajor Tillery, PA DOC# AM9786, will turn 66-years-old on September 9, 2016 and has spent over three decades in prison for crimes he did not commit. Twenty of those 31 plus years were spent in solitary confinement. Tillery has endured many very serious medical issues and medical neglect. Currently, he is plagued with serious illnesses that include hepatitis C, stubborn skin rashes, dangerous intestinal disorders and a degenerative hip. His orthopedic shoes were taken by prison administrators and never returned.

Tillery, was convicted of homicide, assault, weapons and conspiracy charges in 1985, for the poolroom shootings which left one man dead and another wounded. William Franklin was the pool room operator at the time. The shooting occurred on October 22, 1976.

Falsified testimony was the only evidence presented during trial. No other evidence linked Tillery to the 1976 shootings, except for the testimony of two jailhouse informants. Both men swore that they had received no promises, agreements, or deals in exchange for their testimony. Barbra Christie, the trial prosecutor, insisted to the Court and Jury that these witnesses were not given any plea agreements or sentencing promises. That was untrue.

Newly discovered evidence is the sole basis for Tillery's latest Pro Se filing. According to the Post Conviction Relief Petition Filed June 15, 2016, evidence proves that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania committed fraud on the Court and Jury which undermined the fundamentals of due process. The newly discovered evidence in sworn declarations is from two prosecution fact witnesses. Those two witnesses provided the entirety of trial evidence against Major Tillery. The declarations explain false testimonies manufactured by the prosecution with the assistance of police detectives/investigators. On August 19, 2016 Judge Leon Tucker filed a Notice of Intent to Dismiss Major's PCRA petition. Notice to Dismiss

Emanuel Claitt Has Come Forth to Declare His Testimony as Manufactured and Fabricated by Police and Prosecutors. Claitt states that his testimony during trial was fabricated and coerced by Assistant District Attorney Barbara Christie, Detectives John Cimino and James McNeshy. Claitt swore that he was promised a very favorable plea agreement and treatment in his pending criminal cases. Claitt was granted sexual favors in exchange for his false testimony. Claitt states that he was allowed to have sex with four different women in the homicide interview rooms and in hotel rooms in exchange for his cooperation.

Prosecution fact witness Emanuel Claitt states in his Declaration of Emanuel Claitt, and Emanuel Claitt Supplemental Declaration that testimony against Major Tillery was fabricated, coerced and coached by Assistant District Attorney's Leonard Ross, Barbara Christie, and Roger King with the assistance of Detectives Larry Gerrad, Ernest Gilbert, and Lt. Bill Shelton. Claitt was threatened with false murder charges as well as, given promises and agreements of favorable plea deals and sentencing. In exchange for his false testimony, many of Claitt's cases were not prosecuted. He received probation. Additionally, he was sentenced to a mere 18 months for fire bombing and was protected after his arrest between the time of Franklin's and Tillery's trials.

Trial Lawyer Operated Under Actual Conflict of Interest. Tillery discovered that his trial lawyer, Joseph Santaguida, also represented the victim. In other words, the victim in this case was represented by trial lawyer Santaguida and Santaguida also represented Major Tillery. The Commonwealth has concealed newly discovered evidence as well as, evidence which would have been favorable to Major Tillery in the criminal trial. That evidence would have exonerated him. In light of the new Declarations which prove manufactured testimony by prosecutors and police, Major Tillery needs legal representation. He is not currently represented by an attorney.

Donate: Major Tillery's Legal Defense Fund: Click Here & Donate

Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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Art by Leonard Peltier

Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

By Leonard Peltier

I am overwhelmed that today, February 6, is the start of my 43rd year in prison. I have had such high hopes over the years that I might be getting out and returning to my family in North Dakota. And yet here I am in 2018 still struggling for my FREEDOM at 73.

I don't want to sound ungrateful to all my supporters who have stood by me through all these years. I dearly love and respect you and thank you for the love and respect you have given me.

But the truth is I am tired, and often my ailments cause me pain with little relief for days at a time. I just had heart surgery and I have other medical issues that need to be addressed: my aortic aneurysm that could burst at any time, my prostate, and arthritis in my hip and knees.

I do not think I have another ten years, and what I do have I would like to spend with my family. Nothing would bring me more happiness than being able to hug my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I did not come to prison to become a political prisoner. I've been part of Native resistance since I was nine years of age. My sister, cousin and I were kidnapped and taken to boarding school. This incident and how it affected my cousin Pauline, had an enormous effect on me.

This same feeling haunts me as I reflect upon my past 42 years of false imprisonment. This false imprisonment has the same feeling as when I heard the false affidavit the FBI manufactured about Myrtle Poor Bear being at Oglala on the day of the fire-fight—a fabricated document used to extradite me illegally from Canada in 1976.

I know you know that the FBI files are full of information that proves my innocence. Yet many of those files are still withheld from my legal team. During my appeal before the 8th Circuit, former Prosecuting Attorney Lynn Crooks said to Judge Heaney: "Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don't know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it."

That statement exonerates me, and I should have been released. But here I sit, 43 years later still struggling for my freedom. I have pleaded my innocence for so long now, in so many courts of law, in so many public statements issued through the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, that I will not argue it here. But I will say again, I DID NOT KILL THOSE AGENTS!

Right now, I need my supporters here in the U.S. and throughout the world helping me. We need donations large or small to help pay my legal team to do the research that will get me back into court or get me moved closer to home or a compassionate release based on my poor health and age. Please help me to go home, help me win my freedom!

There is a new petition my Canadian brothers and sisters are circulating internationally that will be attached to my letter. Please sign it and download it so you can take it to your work, school or place of worship. Get as many signatures as you can, a MILLION would be great!

I have been a warrior since age nine. At 73, I remain a warrior. I have been here too long. The beginning of my 43rd year plus over 20 years of good time credit, that makes 60-plus years behind bars.

I need your help. I need your help today! A day in prison for me is a lifetime for those outside because I am isolated from the world.

I remain strong only because of your support, prayers, activism and your donations that keep my legal hope alive.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

Doksha,

Leonard Peltier

If you would like a paper petition, please email contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info.

—San Francisco Bay View, February 6, 2018

http://sfbayview.com/2018/02/free-innocent-leonard-peltier-on-his-43rd-year-in-prison-he-yearns-to-hug-his-grandchildren/?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email&iid=50e882c501eb45ed857b582d357f4385&uid=95102586&nid=244+272699400

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman I

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Donations can be made on Leonard's behalf to the ILPD national office, 116 W. Osborne Ave, Tampa, FL 33603

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More Artwork by Kevin Cooper

http://savekevincooper.org/pages/gallery.html

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SOLIDARITY with SERVERS — PLEASE CIRCULATE!

From Clifford Conner

Dear friends and relatives

Every day the scoundrels who have latched onto Trump to push through their rightwing soak-the-poor agenda inflict a new indignity on the human race. Today they are conspiring to steal the tips we give servers in restaurants. The New York Times editorial appended below explains what they're trying to get away with now.

People like you and me cannot compete with the Koch brothers' donors network when it comes to money power. But at least we can try to avoid putting our pittance directly into their hands. Here is a modest proposal: Whenever you are in a restaurant where servers depend on tips for their livelihoods, let's try to make sure they get what we give them.

Instead of doing the easy thing and adding the tip into your credit card payment, GIVE CASH TIPS and HAND THEM DIRECTLY TO YOUR SERVER. If you want to add a creative flourish such as including a preprinted note that explains why you are doing this, by all means do so. You could reproduce the editorial below for their edification.

If you want to do this, be sure to check your wallet before entering a restaurant to make sure you have cash in appropriate denominations.

This is a small act of solidarity with some of the most exploited members of the workforce in America. Perhaps its symbolic value could outweigh its material impact. But to paraphrase the familiar song: What the world needs now is solidarity, sweet solidarity.

If this idea should catch on, be prepared for news stories about restaurant owners demanding that servers empty their pockets before leaving the premises at the end of their shifts. The fight never ends!

Yours in struggle and solidarity,

Cliff

The Trump Administration to Restaurants: Take the Tips!

The New York Times editorial board, December 21, 2017

Most Americans assume that when they leave a tip for waiters and bartenders, those workers pocket the money. That could become wishful thinking under a Trump administration proposal that would give restaurants and other businesses complete control over the tips earned by their employees.

The Department of Labor recently proposed allowing employers to pool tips and use them as they see fit as long as all of their workers are paid at least the minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour nationally and higher in some states and cities. Officials argue that this will free restaurants to use some of the tip money to reward lowly dishwashers, line cooks and other workers who toil in the less glamorous quarters and presumably make less than servers who get tips. Using tips to compensate all employees sounds like a worthy cause, but a simple reading of the government's proposal makes clear that business owners would have no obligation to use the money in this way. They would be free to pocket some or all of that cash, spend it to spiff up the dining room or use it to underwrite $2 margaritas at happy hour. And that's what makes this proposal so disturbing.

The 3.2 million Americans who work as waiters, waitresses and bartenders include some of the lowest-compensated working people in the country. The median hourly wage for waiters and waitresses was $9.61 an hour last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, there is a sordid history of restaurant owners who steal tips, and of settlements in which they have agreed to repay workers millions of dollars.

Not to worry, says the Labor Department, which argues, oddly and unconvincingly, that workers will be better off no matter how owners spend the money. Enlarging dining rooms, reducing menu prices or offering paid time off should be seen as "potential benefits to employees and the economy over all." The department also assures us that owners will funnel tip money to employees because workers would quit otherwise.

t is hard to know how much time President Trump's appointees have spent with single mothers raising two children on a salary from a workaday restaurant in suburban America, seeing how hard it is to make ends meet without tips. What we do know is that the administration has produced no empirical cost-benefit analysis to support its proposal, which is customary when the government seeks to make an important change to federal regulations.

The Trump administration appears to be rushing this rule through — it has offered the public just 30 days to comment on it — in part to pre-empt the Supreme Court from ruling on a 2011 Obama-era tipping rule. The department's new proposal would do away with the 2011 rule. The restaurant industry has filed several legal challenges to that regulation, which prohibits businesses from pooling tips and sharing them with dishwashers and other back-of-the-house workers. Different federal circuit appeals courts have issued contradictory rulings on those cases, so the industry has asked the Supreme Court to resolve those differences; the top court has not decided whether to take that case.

Mr. Trump, of course, owns restaurants as part of his hospitality empire and stands to benefit from this rule change, as do many of his friends and campaign donors. But what the restaurant business might not fully appreciate is that their stealth attempt to gain control over tips could alienate and antagonize customers. Diners who are no longer certain that their tips will end up in the hands of the server they intended to reward might leave no tip whatsoever. Others might seek to covertly slip cash to their server. More high-minded restaurateurs would be tempted to follow the lead of the New York restaurateur Danny Meyer and get rid of tipping by raising prices and bumping up salaries.

By changing the fundamental underpinnings of tipping, the government might well end up destroying this practice. But in doing so it would hurt many working-class Americans, including people who believed that Mr. Trump would fight for them.

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Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations!

Charity for the Wealthy!

GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

By Jake Johnson, December 18, 2017

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/18/gop-tax-plan-would-give-15-americas-largest-corporations-236b-tax-cut-report

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Puerto Rico Still Without Power

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Addicted to War:

And this does not include "…spending $1.25 trillion dollars to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and $566 billion to build the Navy a 308-ship fleet…"

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/18/funding-for-war-vs-natural-disasters/

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Kaepernick sports new T-shirt:

Love this guy!

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1) They Push. They Protest. And Many Activists, Privately, Suffer as a Result.

By JOHN ELIGON MARCH 26, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/us/they-push-they-protest-and-many-activists-privately-suffer-as-a-result.html?hp&action=

click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Ashley Yates is a Black Lives Matter organizer in Oakland, Calif.

Christie Hemm Klok for The New York Times

Ms. Garner led a protest in New York after a state grand jury decided not to indict the police officer involved in the death of her father, Eric Garner. Andrew Burton/Getty Images

She lay curled in bed for days, paralyzed by the stresses of a life that she felt had chosen her as much as she had chosen it.

About three years earlier, the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., had spurred Ashley Yates into activism. She would evolve from street protester in her hometown of St. Louis to Black Lives Matter organizer in Oakland.

But Ms. Yates would also feel the pressures of a job that seemed unrelenting: responding repeatedly to the deaths of black residents in communities across America, struggling to win policy reforms that would benefit black people and rallying others to support her causes.

And then, as last year wound down and Ms. Yates felt so depressed that she could not get out of bed, she was reminded of the most dire consequence of an activist life — untimely death.

A fellow activist, Erica Garner, who fought unsuccessfully for years to hold the police responsible for the death of her father, Eric, died last December from a heart attack. She was three years shy of her 30th birthday.

And as Ms. Yates, 32, remembered Ms. Garner's radicalism and youth, her problems with money and stress, she saw herself. If someone as widely recognized as Ms. Garner could meet such an early demise, then who in the movement was safe, Ms. Yates wondered.

"It's absolutely scary," she said. "It's enough to make you want to quit."

Next month, the world will commemorate the 50th anniversary of one of the most prominent premature deaths in the history of the black liberation struggle, that of Martin Luther King Jr. And whereas he died from an assassin's bullet at the age of 39, dying young continues to rock social justice activists today.

Over the last two years, at least five young activists who gained national prominence amid the Black Lives Matter movement have died. The causes range from suicide to homicide to natural causes. Most recently, Muhiyidin Moye, a well-known activist from Charleston, was fatally shot last month in New Orleans in a crime that remains unsolved.

The deaths have their own unique causes. But with each fallen comrade, activists are left to ponder their own mortality and whether the many pressures of the movement contributed to the shortened lives of their colleagues.

Along with the long hours, constant confrontation and frequent heartbreak they experience, activists work for little or no pay and sometimes struggle for basic needs like food and shelter even as they push for societal change.

An essential part of activism these days, those on the front lines say, is ensuring that they and their comrades work through all the stress, whether it's with meditation, therapy or just taking breaks from the struggle.

"It's much more front and center than it ever was when I was coming up as a young organizer 20 years ago," Cat Brooks, an Oakland-based activist, said of self care.

In many ways, Ms. Garner's story represents the perils activism can inflict on a life.

She grew up poor in New York. Her father died a very public death in 2014, one she would witness through bystanders' videos of a police officer on Staten Island confronting her father on the street, putting him in a chokehold and tackling him to the ground. Mr. Garner lost consciousness and died after crying out in distress, "I can't breathe."

Ms. Garner's activism, like that of many new to a cause, was initially driven more by passion than polished ideas. She held weekly protests on Staten Island, demanding that the officers involved be punished. Yet she doubted that race played a role in her father's killing, she said in a CNN interview.

In late 2014, she connected with Reggie Harris, a political operative and activist, who helped her as she entered the world of activism. Ms. Garner read titles like "The New Jim Crow," "Slavery By Another Name" and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." She developed an understanding of structural racism and how race was a factor in her father's death, Mr. Harris said.

He recalled a community meeting about three years ago in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where Ms. Garner spoke. She called out Staten Island Democrats, saying they were too scared to stand up for her father during an election, and she emphasized the importance of black voters banding together.

"For me, that was a turning point," Mr. Harris said. "She was picking out a very reasonable, attainable set of goals, instead of just saying, 'No justice, no peace.' "

Ms. Garner would meet later with lawmakers and law enforcement officials, travel the country to speak to activist groups and became a surrogate for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran for the Democratic nomination.

She developed an unapologetic style. She bluntly told off politicians and other activists when she believed that they were doing the wrong thing. She stormed out of a town hall where former President Barack Obama spoke after she was not given the opportunity to ask a question, as she said she had been told. Unhappy with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's efforts to hold the police accountable for her father's death, she said in explicit terms on Twitter that just because he had a black wife, it did not mean that he loved black lives.

Her approach of rattling those in power left her isolated in some ways.

Whereas some activists have been able to parlay their work into a level of celebrity — speaking tours, book deals, cozy relationships with politicians and Hollywood A-listers — Ms. Garner did not enjoy those luxuries.

Ifeoma Ike, a lawyer and strategic consultant who mentored Ms. Garner, said it bothered her that Ms. Garner did not get invited to major conferences and other events, even as her father's story was among those used to rally support.

"She just wasn't valued enough while she was here," Ms. Ike said. "That being said, that doesn't take away from the fact that I feel extreme pride about her contributions."

Beyond the stresses of activism, life weighed on Ms. Garner.

She grew frustrated that a state grand jury declined to indict the officers involved in her father's death and that the Justice Department insisted on patience as it conducted its investigation, which remains open. She had trouble getting funding for the Garner Way Foundation she was starting.

Her relationship with her family was strained — sometimes over activism, other times over personal clashes.

"No matter what I said or what I did, she was going to do what she wanted to do," said her mother, Esaw Snipes. "She lived her life by her own terms."

And then there were the stresses of living in poverty. Her housing situation was constantly in flux and she struggled to cobble together money to support her two children, Mr. Harris said. She occasionally received financial support from Al Sharpton's National Action Network and sometimes took in speaking fees, but people often balked at paying her for appearances, Mr. Harris said. She could not hold down a full-time job amid all her activism, but had started writing an autobiography that she hoped would help raise money.

"A lot of times fame comes well before the checks come," said Selena Hunn, a lawyer and friend of Ms. Garner.

Ms. Garner often smoked cigarettes to channel her stress, Mr. Harris said, but friends saw small signs that she became more mindful of her health in her final months.

After giving birth to her son last August, she found out that she had a heart problem. In an interview with the progressive talk show host Benjamin Dixon in early December, she did something she rarely did publicly — discussed coping with stress. "Like, I'm struggling right now with the stress and everything," Ms. Garner said. "Because this thing, it beats you down. The system beats you down."

A couple of weeks later, Ms. Garner went on a vacation to the Poconos with her daughter and foster mother. On Dec. 20, she posted on Facebook a picture of herself in a bubble bath with the caption, "Just what I needed."

Three days later, Ms. Garner suffered a heart attack and was in a coma.

The news would quickly ripple through activist circles.

"Let's lift up Erica Garner," Kristian Blackmon, a St. Louis-based activist, posted to her Facebook page on December 25.

Five days later, Ms. Garner died.

In a group text message chat, Ms. Blackmon and other black female activists lamented that Ms. Garner could have been any of them, and how resistant the system was to change.

"It kills us in every way possible," said Brittini Gray, an organizer who goes by Ree Belle, recalling what they discussed in the group chat.

In Oakland, Ms. Yates forced herself out of bed to mourn the loss of Ms. Garner with friends and fellow activists.

They decided that they needed to fight on, because that's how Ms. Garner would have wanted it.

"I went back to life, I guess," Ms. Yates said. "But with a lot more anger."

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2) Grocery Wars Turn Small Chains Into Battlefield Casualties
By MICHAEL CORKERY MARCH 26, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/business/grocery-wars-small-chains.html?rref=
collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=
rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

After a career in groceries, Maribeth Druse still works part time at the Tops Market in Cooperstown, N.Y. "Who works in the same job for 44 years and gets a pension anymore?" she asked. "Nobody." Andrew Seng for The New York Times

CHESTERTOWN, N.Y. — At the Tops Market on Main Street, there's a "Mega Meat Sale" — buy one pork chop and get another free.

There are specials on avocados, paper towels and fried fish. Craft beer shares shelf space with cases of Genesee, a local favorite.

The clean and brightly lit store shows few hints of the financial strain the Tops grocery chain faces. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last month, another casualty in a grocery war that is raging across the country, from tiny mountainous hamlets like Chestertown to the gentrified enclaves of Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

It wasn't long before another wobbly grocery chain buckled under financial pressure. This month, the parent company of the Southern stores Winn-Dixie and Bi-Lo said it would file for Chapter 11 protectionby the end of the month, and close 94 stores.

The competition to feed American families is reaching a fever pitch, as the improving economy and shifting shopping habits send supermarkets scrambling to gain market share.

Amazon's $13 billion purchase of Whole Foods in June added a sense of urgency, raising the prospect that the e-commerce giant would find a way to upend groceries just as it has every other aspect of retail. This month, Walmart responded with its own plan to start offering an online grocery delivery service in 100 cities.

These digital initiatives — and aggressive price cuts and expansion by other deep-pocketed retailers like the German entry Lidl — are weeding out the weakest links.

"There is a tremendous shakeout in food retail right now," said Burt P. Flickinger III, a managing director of the retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, whose family founded a grocery business more than a century ago.

At stake is not only the price of toothpaste and bananas, but the fate of thousands of cashiers, cake decorators and meat cutters, many of whom belong to labor unions and are owed pensions when they retire. Tops employs more than 12,000 unionized employees at about 160 stores in New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

Maribeth Druse made a lifelong career in groceries, but given the industry's struggles, her experience will increasingly be harder to replicate.

Ms. Druse, 61, was still in high school when she started working in the meat department of a grocery chain that Tops eventually acquired. She now collects a $20,000-a year-pension and is still able to work part time at the Tops in Cooperstown, N.Y.

"Who works in the same job for 44 years and gets a pension anymore?" Ms. Druse asked. "Nobody."

Like businesses in other industries — including Toys "R" Us, which announced liquidation plans this month — many failing supermarkets are owned by private equity firms that have loaded the companies up with debt. That hampers their ability to compete in an environment where prices in some markets have dropped by as much as 25 percent, Mr. Flickinger said.

Tops was long challenged by the debt its former private equity backer, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, heaped on it.

The private equity firm Lone Star has cashed out $980 million in dividends from Winn-Dixie's parent company since 2011, according to Moody's Investors Service. Most of the payments were made by taking out debt on the chain, leaving less money to invest in stores.

Marsh Supermarkets, an Indianapolis regional grocer that had been backed by private equity, laid off more than 1,500 workers and required a federal takeover of its pension plan last year.

And Fairway, the iconic New York grocer that Blackstone took ownership of after it went bankrupt in 2016, is still trying to distinguish itself in a crowded field, but reports making some progress on its turnaround.

This month, Fairway executives met with the company's roughly 3,500 workers, most of whom are unionized, to unveil a set of new initiatives — like investments in a new marketing campaign. It plans to emphasize the company's role in bringing new foods to market, as it did with Chobani yogurt and Cape Cod potato chips.

"I am here to announce that Fairway has bounced back," the chief executive, Abel Porter, told a group of cheering workers.

Blackstone has been making investments in Fairway, but company executives acknowledge that the grocer faces an uphill battle.

"It's not a level playing field," Mr. Porter said in an interview. "Competing against Amazon is like competing against the government or a military commissary."

Amid the intense competition, the number of supermarket stores around the country increased from 2010 to 2015, but the number of supermarket operators declined slightly. Analysts and industry executives say the pace of consolidation is expected to accelerate.

The changes are also taking a toll on unions. Membership in United Food and Commercial Workers, the largest grocery union, has dropped more than 9 percent since 2002, to about 1.2 million, according to the Labor Department.

While some union officials cite factors like automation and state laws unfavorable to organized labor for the decline in membership, others blame the bankruptcies.

"The private equity owners try to drain every last ounce of blood from these companies," said John T. Niccollai, president of Local 464A of the U.F.C.W., which represents grocery workers in New York and New Jersey. "Their feeling is if it goes bankrupt, so be it."

Mr. Niccollai, a former butcher who went on to get a law degree, works out of a cavernous union office, near Paterson, N.J., that is a throwback to a different era. A worn red carpet covers the floor; photos of union officials greeting priests adorn the wood-paneled walls.

When Mr. Niccollai started working at the union in the late 1970s, the A & P grocery chain had about 7,000 stores. By the time A & P had filed for its second bankruptcy, in 2015, it was down to about 125. Mr. Niccollai found jobs elsewhere for 3,500 workers who had been displaced by the bankruptcy, but 1,500 of his members were out of work.

He recently added membership by organizing some of the warehouse workers at the Peapod grocery delivery service, but it is challenging when the industry is increasingly dominated by nonunion employers like Walmart and Amazon.

"We are fighting hard," Mr. Niccollai said.

Tops's path into bankruptcy was similar to that of other unionized grocery chains. The first Tops supermarket was opened in Niagara Falls in 1962 by an Italian immigrant. The company grew into a large regional player that bought up smaller grocers and discount food stores through the 1990s.

The international food giant Ahold acquired Tops in 2001. The company was sold to Morgan Stanley's private equity team six years later. Under the firm's ownership, Tops loaded up on debt and paid out roughly $300 million in dividends to its investors, according to Moody's.

Even though Morgan Stanley no longer owns the company, Tops never overcame the debt burden.

Tight on cash, the grocery chain has faced tough competition, even in more remote markets like Chestertown, a community of about 700 people in the Adirondacks.

Many residents said they drove 35 miles to shop for food at Walmart on the weekends but shopped at Tops, often paying higher prices, during the week because it was close to home.

But Tops's virtual monopoly in the town ended in August 2016 when Dollar General — a national discounting chain — opened a store in Chestertown. The Dollar General doesn't sell much fresh produce or meat, but it is siphoning off Tops customers with huge deals on other staples.

At $2.80, a gallon of whole milk at Dollar General costs about the same as a half-gallon at Tops.

Alex Colpas, 27, who works at a marina on a local lake, said he rarely shopped at Tops any longer because of the deals at Dollar General.

"You don't even need a grocery store, frankly, if you can find a better way to shop," Mr. Colpas said. "It's a relic."

When it filed for bankruptcy, Tops said it expected to operate "as normal'' throughout the bankruptcy, but union officials are bracing for closings.

"I have never seen a bankruptcy that doesn't lead to closing stores," said Frank DeRiso, president of U.F.C.W. Local 1, which represents Tops workers in New York.

Tops, analysts say, would face a difficult time waging a price war with Dollar General.

"Survival depends on your ability to weather pricing pressure over an extended period of time," said Mickey Chadha, a senior credit officer at Moody's. "The weak guys can't do that."

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3) What was the Vietnam War About"

By Christian G. Appy, March 26, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/opinion/what-was-the-vietnam-war-about.html

A group of South Vietnamese army soldiers and an American soldier with two captured Vietcong suspects, in Plaines des Joncs, South Vietnam. Tim Page/Corbis, via Getty Images

Was America's war in Vietnam a noble struggle against Communist aggression, a tragic intervention in a civil conflict, or an imperialist counterrevolution to crush a movement of national liberation? Those competing interpretations ignited fiery debates in the 1960s and remain unresolved today. How we name and define this most controversial of American wars is not a narrow scholarly exercise, but profoundly shapes public memory of its meaning and ongoing significance to American national identity and foreign policy.

During the war years, America's leaders insisted that military force was necessary to defend a sovereign nation — South Vietnam — from external Communist aggression. As President Lyndon B. Johnson put it in 1965, "The first reality is that North Vietnam has attacked the independent nation of South Vietnam. Its object is total conquest."

Even more disturbing, Johnson quickly added (following a script written by his predecessors Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy), the Communists in Vietnam were supported and guided by the Soviet Union and China. Therefore, the war in South Vietnam was not an isolated, local conflict, irrelevant to American national security, but rather one that was inseparable from the nation's highest priority — the Cold War struggle to contain Communism around the globe. Further raising the stakes, policymakers warned that if South Vietnam fell to Communism, neighboring countries would inevitably fall in turn, one after another, like a row of dominoes.

Three decades later, Robert McNamara, a key architect of the Vietnam War who served as defense secretary for both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, renounced those wartime claims — the very ones he and others had invoked to justify the war. In two books, "In Retrospect" (1995) and "Argument Without End" (2000), McNamara conceded that the United States had been "terribly wrong" to intervene in Vietnam. He attributed the failure to a lack of knowledge and judgment. If only he had understood the fervor of Vietnamese nationalism, he wrote, if only he had known that Hanoi was not the pawn of Beijing or Moscow, if only he had realized that the domino theory was wrong, he might have persuaded his presidential bosses to withdraw from Vietnam. Millions of lives would have been saved. If only.

In fact, however, in the 1960s, when McNamara advocated massive military escalation in Vietnam, he simply rejected or ignored any evidence that contradicted Cold War orthodoxy. It's not as if contrary views were unavailable. In the work of the scholar-journalist Bernard Fall, the pages of I. F. Stone's Weekly, speeches at university teach-ins and antiwar rallies and countless other venues, critics pointed out that after World War II the United States made a clear choice to support the French effort to re-establish its colonial rule in Indochina, and eventually assumed the bulk of France's cost for the first Indochina War. It should have been no surprise, therefore, that Vietnamese revolutionaries perceived the United States as a neocolonial power when it committed its own military forces in the next war.

Moreover, critics argued, the primary roots of opposition to the American-backed government in Saigon were indigenous and deep rooted, not just in North Vietnam, but throughout the South.

Indeed, from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s the bulk of Communist-led fighting was carried out by southern guerrillas of the National Liberation Front, known to its enemies as the Vietcong. Only after the war was well underway did large units from North Vietnam arrive on the southern front. Antiwar opponents also challenged the claim that South Vietnam was an "independent nation" established by the Geneva Accords of 1954. Those agreements called for a temporarypartition of Vietnam to be shortly followed by a nationwide election to choose a single leader for a unified Vietnam. When it became clear to both Saigon and Washington that the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh would be the overwhelming victor, the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem, with American support, decided to cancel the election.

Thus began a two-decade failed effort to build a permanent country called "South Vietnam." The government in Saigon was never a malleable puppet of the United States, but it was nonetheless wholly dependent on American military and economic support to survive against its enemies, including many non-Communist parties and factions in the South.

Armed with these criticisms, many opponents of American policy in the 1960s described Vietnam as a civil war — not like the relatively clear-cut North-South division of the American Civil War, but a nationwide struggle of Communist-led forces of the South and North against the American-backed government in the South. By 1966, this analysis was even embraced by some mainstream politicians, including Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Eugene McCarthy, who ran as an antiwar presidential candidate in 1968. Both men called attention to the "South Vietnamese civil war" to emphasize the strength of the southern insurgency and the failure of the Saigon government to gain the broad support of its own people.

By 1972, the idea that Vietnam posed a threat to Cold War America was so discredited, it sometimes sounded as if America's only remaining war aim was to get back its P.O.W.s (President Richard Nixon bizarrely claimed that Hanoi was using them as "negotiating pawns"). Even more mind-boggling were Nixon's historic 1972 trips to Beijing and Moscow. Many Americans wondered how Nixon could offer toasts of peace to Mao Zedong and Leonid Brezhnev while still waging war in Vietnam. As the journalist Jonathan Schell put it, "If these great powers were not, after all, the true foe," then the war in Vietnam "really was a civil war in a small country, as its opponents had always said, and the United States had no business taking part in it."

But alongside the "civil war" interpretation, a more radical critique developed — the view that America's enemy in Vietnam was engaged in a long-term war for national liberation and independence, first from the French and then the United States. According to this position, the war was best understood not as a Cold War struggle between East and West, or a Vietnamese civil war, but as an anticolonial struggle, similar to dozens of others that erupted throughout the Third World in the wake of World War II. When the French were defeated by Vietnamese revolutionaries (despite enormous American support), the United States stepped in directly to wage a counterrevolutionary war against an enemy determined to achieve full and final independence from foreign control.

This interpretation was shared by many on the antiwar left, including Daniel Ellsberg, the once-hawkish defense analyst who turned so strongly against the war that he was willing to sabotage his career by making public 7,000 pages of classified documents about the history of the Vietnam War, the so-called Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg made his argument most succinctly in the 1974 documentary "Hearts and Minds."

"The name for a conflict in which you are opposing a revolution is counterrevolution," he said. "A war in which one side is entirely financed and equipped and supported by foreigners is not a civil war." The question used to be, he added, "might it be possible that we were on the wrong side in the Vietnamese war. We weren't on the wrong side; we are the wrong side."

In the decades since 1975, all three major interpretations have persisted. Some writers and historians have embraced President Ronald Reagan's view that the war was a "noble cause" that might have been won. That position has failed to persuade most specialists in the field, in large part because it greatly exaggerates the military and political virtues and success of the United States and the government of South Vietnam. It also falls short because it depends on counterfactual claims that victory would have been achieved if only the United States had extended its support for Diem (instead of greenlighting his overthrow), or tried a different military strategy, or done a better job winning hearts and minds. However, the war as it was actually conducted by the United States and its allies was a disaster by every measure.

In recent decades, a number of historians — particularly younger scholars trained in Vietnamese and other languages — have developed various versions of the civil war interpretation. Some of them view the period after the French defeat in 1954 as "post-colonial," a time in which long-brewing internal conflicts between competing versions of Vietnamese nationalism came to a head. As the historian Jessica Chapman of Williams College puts it, "The Vietnam War was, at its core, a civil war greatly exacerbated by foreign intervention." Others have described it as a civil war that became "internationalized."

While these scholars have greatly enhanced our knowledge of the complexity and conflict in Vietnamese history, politics and culture, they don't, in my view, assign enough responsibility to the United States for causing and expanding the war as a neocolonial power.

Let's try a thought experiment. What if our own Civil War bore some resemblance to the Vietnamese "civil war"? For starters, we would have to imagine that in 1860 a global superpower — say Britain — had strongly promoted Southern secession, provided virtually all of the funding for the ensuing war and dedicated its vast military to the battle. We must also imagine that in every Southern state, local, pro-Union forces took up arms against the Confederacy. Despite enormous British support, Union forces prevailed. What would Americans call such a war? Most, I think, would remember it as the Second War of Independence. Perhaps African-Americans would call it the First War of Liberation. Only former Confederates and the British might recall it as a "civil war."

I would reverse Chapman's formula and say that the Vietnam War was, at its core, an American war that exacerbated Vietnamese divisions and internationalized the conflict. It is true, of course, that many Vietnamese opposed the Communist path to national liberation, but no other nationalist party or faction proved capable of gaining enough support to hold power. Without American intervention, it is hard to imagine that South Vietnam would have come into being or, if it did, that it would have endured for long.

Moreover, no other foreign nation deployed millions of troops to South Vietnam (although the United States did pressure or pay a handful of other nations, Australia and South Korea most notably, to send smaller military forces). And no other foreign nation or opponent dropped bombs (eight million tons!) on South and North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The introduction of that staggering lethality was the primary driver of a war that cost three million lives, half of them civilians.

If we continue to excuse American conduct in Vietnam as a well-intentioned, if tragic, intervention rather than a purposeful assertion of imperial power, we are less likely to challenge current war managers who have again mired us in apparently endless wars based on false or deeply misleading pretexts. Just as in the Vietnam era, American leaders have ordered troops to distant lands based on boundless abstractions ("the global war on terror" instead of the global threat of "international Communism"). And once again, their mission is to prop up governments that demonstrate no capacity to gain the necessary support of their people. Once again, the United States has waged brutal counterinsurgencies guaranteed to maim, kill or displace countless civilians. It has exacerbated international violence and provoked violent retaliation.

Our leaders, then and now, have insisted that the United States is "the greatest force for good in the world" that wants nothing for itself, only to defeat "terror" and bring peace, stability and self-determination to other lands. The evidence does not support such a claim. We need a new, cleareyed vision of our global conduct. A more critical appraisal of the past is one place to start.

Christian G. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of "American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity."

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4) Baton Rouge Officers Will Not Be Charged in Alton Sterling's Killing
By ALAN BLINDER and RICHARD FAUSSET MARCH 27, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/alton-sterling-baton-rouge.html?hp&action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=
top-news&WT.nav=top-news

A memorial mural to Alton B. Sterling outside of the Triple S Food Mart, where he was killed by the police, in Baton Rouge, La., in 2016. William Widmer for The New York Times

A pair of white police officers in Baton Rouge, La., will not be prosecuted by the state authorities in a fatal shooting of a black man there almost two years ago. The decision brings another closely watched and widely scrutinized investigation of potential police misconduct to an end without charges.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced his conclusion at a news conference on Tuesday, almost 11 months after the United States Department of Justice declined to bring charges in the death of the man, Alton B. Sterling, was widely expected, in part because officers are rarely charged in connection with on-duty shootings.

In a separate written report that described the efforts by the officers to gain control of Mr. Sterling, as well as their belief that he was armed, Mr. Landry's office said it had "concluded that the officers in question acted as reasonable officers under existing law and were justified in their use of force."

The decisions by Mr. Landry and by the Justice Department effectively end the threat of criminal prosecutions against Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II. The officers were called to the Triple S Food Mart on July 5, 2016, to respond to a report that a black man in a red shirt had brandished a gun and threatened someone. The officers and the man, Mr. Sterling, ended up in a confrontation that left Mr. Sterling dead, prompted large protests in Baton Rouge, the Louisiana capital, and broadened the national debate about law enforcement tactics and the influence of race on American policing.

In a widely seen cellphone video of the encounter between the officers and Mr. Sterling, 37, the officers hold Mr. Sterling down, and at one point someone can be heard saying, "He's got a gun! Gun!" An officer immediately draws his weapon and, after some more shouting, what appear to be gunshots are heard. The camera points elsewhere, and there are more apparent gunshots. Officer Salamoni fired all of the rounds.

When the camera's lens returns to Mr. Sterling, who had been selling CDs, neither officer is atop him; instead, he lies on the ground, bleeding.

nother video of the shooting, filmed by the owner of the store, depicted the encounter from a different angle. That video showed one of the officers removing something from Mr. Sterling's pocket. Witnesses later said they saw a handgun on the ground next to Mr. Sterling — the federal government said it was a loaded .38 caliber revolver — but his relatives said they were not aware that he owned a gun.

Mr. Sterling had a long criminal history, including convictions for battery and illegal possession of a gun.

The Justice Department, which said it could not meet the high legal standard required to charge a police officer with willfully violating someone's civil rights, closed its inquiry last year. That decision was a significant disappointment to members of Mr. Sterling's family and other critics of the police, who regarded the shooting as a murder. In a summary of its findings, the department said it had reviewed multiple videos of the encounter and interviewed both officers, who said Mr. Sterling had been resistant throughout the encounter.

"Officer Salamoni reported that he saw the gun coming out and attempted to grab it, but Sterling jerked away and attempted to grab the gun again," the Justice Department wrote last year. "Officer Salamoni then saw 'silver' and knew that he had seen a gun, so he began firing. Both officers reported that after the first three shots, they believed that Sterling was attempting to reach into his right pocket again, so Officer Salamoni fired three more times into Sterling's back."

Some witnesses offered contradictory accounts, but the Justice Department said the evidence was "insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that the officers violated federal law, which requires that an officer act deliberately and not merely with negligence, poor judgment or error.

Yet L. Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Sterling's family, said last yearthat Justice Department officials had informed them that the actions of the officers "were outrageous, were inappropriate, were not following procedure."

Lawyers also said that Mr. Sterling's relatives were shown enhanced video and audio clips revealing that Officer Salamoni had said to Mr. Sterling, "I'll kill you, bitch," or something like it, as he put a gun to Mr. Sterling's head.

When the Justice Department ended its review, there were renewed protests in Baton Rouge, but they were relatively muted compared to those the previous summer. It then fell to Mr. Landry to determine whether the state would bring any charges.

In his announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Landry broadly echoed the Justice Department's findings and defended the conduct of the officers, saying, for example, that their efforts to gain control of Mr. Sterling's hands were "well-founded and reasonable under the circumstances and under Louisiana law." He also said the officers were justified in their concern about whether Mr. Sterling was armed.

Mr. Landry noted that it was not his office's role "to determine whether the Baton Rouge Police Department's policy was followed, or if certain tactics or language was more appropriate than others."

Officers Salamoni and Lake have been on paid leave since the shooting.

Before his announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Landry, a Republican former congressman who was elected attorney general in 2015, had said relatively little about the case. Soon after the shooting, he described it as "a tragic incident."

As officials in Baton Rouge braced on Tuesday for more demonstrations, he adopted a similar tone.

"As with every criminal case, we must analyze the evidence, the law and the facts and then draw a conclusion," he said. "But we are always mindful of the human element. I know the Sterling family is hurting. I know that they do not agree with this decision."

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5) Judge Drops Charges Against 13 Who Argued Pipeline Civil Disobedience Action Was "Necessary" to Save Planet
By Andrea Germanos, March 28, 2018
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/03/28/judge-drops-charges-against-13-who-argued-pipeline-civil-disobedience-action-was

Defendants and legal team pose for a photo after their March 27, 2018 trail on the steps of the West Roxbury, Mass. courthouse. (Photo: Peter Bowden/flickr/cc)

Climate activists are cheering after a district judge in Boston on Tuesday ruled that 13 fossil fuel pipeline protesters were not responsible for any infraction because of the necessity of their actions.

Bill McKibben, who was slated to be an expert witness in their case, tweeted a celebratory "Good golly!' in response to the ruling, adding, "This may be a first in America. "

The charges the defendants faced stemmed from actions they took in 2016 to block Spectra Energy's fracked gas West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. While they had spent a year and a half preparing a climate necessity defense to present to a jury trail, prosecutors prevented that from happening last week when they reduced the criminal charges to civil infractions. "By reducing the charges," the Climate Disobedience Center argues, "the prosecutor has avoided what could have been a groundbreaking legal case."

Judge Mary Ann Driscoll, did, however, allow each of the defendants to explain to the court why they were motivated to take part in their actions to stop the Massachusetts pipeline. After that, according to a lawyer for the defendants, she said they were not responsible by reason of necessity.

Speaking on the steps outside the courthouse following the verdict, defendant and noted climate activist Tim DeChristopher said they "asked the judge to recognize that that evidence was out there—that's it clear across our society the severity of climate change, the degree to which the government response has been a failure, and the degree to which regular folks like us have a necessity to act to prevent this harm."

"Hopefully, next time around we'll be able to do that with a jury, and we'll keep fighting," he said.

Defendant Callista Womick spoke outside the courthouse as well, saying that "it's hubristic to think we can keep poisoning the planet and keep living on it." As such, she said she took part in the protest because she saw it as "part of my duty to my fellow human beings and fellow life forms."

According to defendant Karenna Gore, director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary (and daughter of former Vice President Al Gore), what happened in the courtroom was "really important," though she noted "the irony" of being found not responsible for the infractions because "we are making ourselves responsible."

"We are part of the movement that's standing up and saying, 'We won't let this go by on our watch. We won't act like nothing's wrong,'" she said. "We're going to be speaking up in new ways," she added.

"We're going to be demanding that the people who are in elected office, and also the corporations who are putting their costs, the cost of their doing business, for their own profits... on the public, they're putting that cost on future generations. And we are taking responsibility to say 'no' to that."

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6) Ecuador Cuts Off Julian Assange's Internet Access. Again.
By SEWELL CHAN MARCH 28, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/world/europe/julian-assange-internet-ecuador.html?rref=
collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=
stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

Julian Assange has lived at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden. Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ecuador's government said Wednesday that it had suspended internet access for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who since 2012 has lived in Ecuador's Embassy in London, out of concern that he was harming its relationships with Britain and other European nations.

The decision set off a furious reaction from some Assange supporters. One of them, Kim Dotcom, an online renegade who founded a file-sharing site, urged supporters to gather outside the embassy in protest. The filmmaker Oliver Stone wrote on Twitter: "Free Julian Assange! Restore his internet connection!"

Ecuador's government granted Mr. Assange citizenship in January, the latest step in a longstanding diplomatic standoff. But it said it had suspended Mr. Assange's online communications on Tuesday because he had imperiled "the good relations that the country maintains with the United Kingdom, with the rest of the states of the European Union, and other nations" through his social-media messages.

The government did not provide specifics, but some speculated that the decision might have been related to the Western nations' coordinated actions against Russia after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. In a series of Twitter posts this week, Mr. Assange was critical of Western nations' expulsions of Russian diplomats.

The agendas of WikiLeaks and Russia have dovetailed at times, whether by coincidence or intent.

In July 2016, WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails that had been hacked by the Russian government, embarrassing the party's nominee, Hillary Clinton. In November, it emerged that Donald Trump Jr. had online conversations with WikiLeaks during his father's campaign.

Two Assange supporters — the English rock musician Brian Eno and the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis — speculated that Ecuador was reacting to tweets in which Mr. Assange criticized the Spanish government's detention of Catalan separatists and the recent arrest, in Germany, of the separatist leader Carles Puigdemont. They called efforts to isolate Mr. Assange "appalling."

This was not the first time Ecuador had cut off Mr. Assange: It did so in October 2016, saying it feared being sucked into efforts to interfere in the American election.

Mr. Assange went to the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about rape allegations. Sweden dropped that inquiry last May, saying that too much time had passed.

But Mr. Assange still faces a British charge for skipping bail and, more pressingly, fears being arrested and deported to the United States. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fueled such fears last year when he said that arresting Mr. Assange was "a priority."

Mr. Assange, a 46-year-old native of Australia, has long been an irritant for the British authorities. A junior foreign minister, Alan Duncan, told members of Parliament this week, "It's about time that this miserable little worm walked out of the embassy and gave himself up to British justice."

Now, the patience of his Ecuadorean hosts appears to be wearing thin as well.

Ecuador's foreign minister, María Fernanda Espinosa, said Wednesday that officials would meet in London next week with Mr. Assange's lawyers to explore additional measures that Ecuador might take in connection what she called Mr. Assange's "noncompliance" with his agreement not to meddle in foreign affairs.

"We are evaluating the measures with our lawyers," she said. "We will explore what are the alternatives that allow us the framework of international law and our own legislation and Ecuadorean Constitution."

She added, "The most important thing is that Ecuador maintains a dialogue with the United Kingdom to find a definitive and lasting solution to this situation that the current government has inherited."

Her remarks alluded to the distaste that Ecuador's president, Lenín Moreno, has expressed toward Mr. Assange. Although it was Mr. Moreno's government that gave Mr. Assange citizenship, the president appeared to have done so reluctantly, and mainly out of respect for his predecessor and ally, Rafael Correa.

Maggy Ayala contributed reporting.

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7) His Clients Weren't Complaining. But the Judge Said This Lawyer Worked Too Hard.
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. MARCH 29, 2018
"A criminal defense lawyer in Galveston, Tex., says he was pulled off cases defending poor clients because he spent too much time on them and requested funds to have their charges investigated."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/us/indigent-defense-lawyer-texas.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=
click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

According to a lawsuit filed by Drew Willey, a criminal defense lawyer, a judge told him that he spent too much time defending individual clients. Loren Elliott for The New York Times

Can a lawyer work too hard to defend a client? That all depends on who is paying the bill, a new lawsuit argues.

A criminal defense lawyer in Galveston, Tex., says he was pulled off cases defending poor clients because he spent too much time on them and requested funds to have their charges investigated.

Needless to say, his clients were not the ones complaining. Instead, it was the judge, Jack Ewing, who appoints lawyers for those in his courtroom who cannot afford them.

"You overwork cases," Judge Ewing told the lawyer, Drew Willey, according to excerpts from a recorded conversation cited in the lawsuit.

Though an estimated four of every five criminal defendants in the United States use court-appointed lawyers or public defenders, many of the nation's indigent defense systems have been criticized as desperately inadequate, leading to false guilty pleas and overincarceration.

Lawyers who represent the poor can be required to juggle hundreds of cases at a time, accept pay far lower than the market rate, or take cases for which they have little experience.

This new case, though, exposes another potential problem: Indigent defense lawyers often get their assignments from the judges in whose courtroom they appear. This discourages a robust defense, experts say, and leads to an emphasis on resolving cases quickly.

The tensions may be familiar to lawyers, but they are rarely so candidly aired as in this lawsuit, filed in federal court last week and bolstered by parts of a recorded conversation with the judge.

Mr. Willey's lawyer, Charlie Gerstein of Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., said the lawsuit would be the first in a series of cases and was filed partly to illustrate a "phenomenon that pervades the entire legal system."

The lawsuit contends that Judge Ewing took away some of Mr. Willey's poor clients and refused to appoint him new ones because "he sought to provide a vigorous legal and factual defense for his clients."

Mr. Willey said he has been appointed to only one case before Judge Ewing since May 2016, and that appointment was effectively made by another judge. The lawsuit asks for him to be reinstated and for Judge Ewing to be barred from retaliating against him.

In an interview, Judge Ewing denied the allegations, saying he assigned some cases to another lawyer because many of Mr. Willey's cases were unresolved and Mr. Willey seemed overwhelmed. He also said that, as far as he knows, Mr. Willey's eligibility to represent indigent defendants has never changed.

But according to the lawsuit, Judge Ewing told Mr. Willey that he spent too much time defending individual clients.

"You are the only attorney" to routinely ask for a paid investigator, the judge said. He also complained that cases resulting in guilty pleas generally should not take more than three hours of work, but Mr. Willey sometimes took longer.

Relatively few criminal cases ever go to trial; most end instead in guilty pleas. But that does not mean that time and money is spent on them in vain. The length of the sentence offered in a plea bargain can hinge on the strength of the prosecution's case, and a thorough evaluation of the evidence can put defense lawyers in a stronger negotiating position.

Mr. Willey's lawsuit offered the example of a client charged with breaking into a car. The client faced up to a year in jail, but Mr. Willey found "blatant inconsistencies" in police statements. When prosecutors declined to reduce the charge, he hired an investigator, the lawsuit says.

Ultimately the client was allowed to plead guilty to criminal mischief, the lowest class of misdemeanor, which carried no possible jail time and was eligible for expungement from his record, Mr. Willey said.

Yet Judge Ewing cut Mr. Willey's request for $1,320 in pay on the case to $511, citing "excessive out-of-court hours," according to the lawsuit. After Mr. Willey appealed, another judge approved the full amount.

A 2011 RAND Corporation study of more than 3,000 Philadelphia murder cases found that clients fared better when they were represented by a lawyer from an independent public defender organization than if they had one appointed by a judge: Their conviction rate was 19 percent lower; the chances that they would serve a life sentence were reduced by 62 percent; and their expected sentence length was 24 percent shorter.

"Judges have incentives to appoint counsel who file fewer pretrial motions, ask fewer questions during voir dire, raise fewer objections, and present fewer witnesses," the study said.

And, experts say, that gives lawyers reason to push for a fast resolution, skipping thorough investigations or motions that might slow the docket or displease the judge. Some defense lawyers also fear that if they object too strenuously, their clients will be penalized.

"Public defense providers internalize, and try to figure out what it takes to get the next contract," said David Carroll, executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, a nonpartisan group that provides technical assistance on criminal justice matters to state and local policymakers. "A judge doesn't actually have to say, 'Don't file any motions in my courtroom.'"

In a survey commissioned by the Texas bar in 2000, nearly half of the criminal court judges in Texas said that a lawyer's "reputation for moving cases, regardless of the quality of defense" was sometimes or usually a factor in appointment decisions made by their peers.

Mr. Willey, four years out of law school, represents clients in misdemeanor and felony cases. Judge Ewing said Mr. Willey's "inexperience leads him to tend to charge more hours than what normally would be approved."

He recalled his conversations with Mr. Willey differently from how they are described in the lawsuit.

"I think I said, 'I can't be paying you five times or six times an attorney with 20 years' more experience,'" Judge Ewing said. He added that he had reduced pay requests he deemed excessive from other lawyers as well.

Galveston County, Judge Ewing added, has safeguards to ensure defendants have lawyers with experience commensurate with the severity of charges they face.

"We are giving people the best representation they can get if they are indigent," he said. "If that is truly Mr. Willey's goal, then I'd say we have something in common."

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8) Israeli Military Kills at Least 12 in Confrontations on Gaza Border
By ISABEL KERSHNER and IYAD ABUHEWEILAMARCH 30, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-protest-clashes.html?hp&action=
click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=
top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Israeli soldiers shot tear gas across the border with Gaza on Friday as Palestinians gathered for demonstrations expected to last six weeks. Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

JERUSALEM — What was billed as a six-week campaign of peaceful protests in Gaza, culminating in a mass march toward Israel, descended almost immediately into chaos and bloodshed on Friday, with at least twelvet Palestinians reported killed by Israeli soldiers in confrontations along the border fence.

Soon after the campaign began Friday morning, the Israeli military reported that Palestinian protesters were rioting in six locations along the border, rolling burning tires and hurling stones at the fence and at Israeli soldiers beyond it. Later, it reported that Molotov cocktails were thrown at soldiers.

By late afternoon, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said that twelve Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire, and more than 1,000 injured.

Declaring the area surrounding the Gaza Strip a closed military zone, the Israeli military said it was “responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators.” Israeli forces fired live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas.

The Palestinian organizers had called for peaceful protests, referred to as the Great March of Return, or the March of the Million, with men, women and children bused to tent encampments that popped up in recent days about 700 yards from the border with Israel. About 20,000 demonstrators came to the tent encampments, but most appeared to have stayed well away from the border fence and did not engage in violence.

The idea was to protest Israel’s more than decade-long blockade of Gaza, which restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of the coastal territory, and which Israel calls a security imperative, as well as to highlight Palestinian demands for a right of return to the lands that became Israel 70 years ago. A majority of Gaza’s two million residents are refugees of the 1948 war that surrounded Israel’s creation, or their descendants.

Girding for violence, Israel had almost doubled its forces along the border, deploying snipers, special units and drones, and warning that it would act to prevent any breach of the border fence or violation of Israel’s sovereignty.

The idea for the border encampments, in about half a dozen locations, was initiated by a Gazan social-media activist, Ahmed Abu Artema, a political independent.

It was adopted by Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza and is known for its armed resistance, which promoted the protest on its social media platforms and urged Palestinians to participate.

“Our will in achieving the actual return to our lands is more powerful than jet fighters and a gun,” Mr. Abu Artema said by phone on Friday as he was on his way to the protest. “This march is rightful and will not be used and exploited for political agendas.”

For Israel, the prospect of unarmed mass protests posed the challenge of trying to maintain deterrence by threatening harsh measures, while also trying to avoid mass civilian casualties. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, warned in a statement that any shoot-to-kill policy against unarmed demonstrators would be unlawful, unless the soldiers’ lives were threatened.

Before the larger clashes broke out, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza reported that a Palestinian man, a farmer, was killed near the border zone early Friday by Israeli artillery fire — one of the 12 it reported dead later in the day. Describing the incident, the Israeli military said one of its tanks had fired on two Palestinians who approached the border and were “acting suspiciously.”

“We are raising the flags of peace and have nothing to harm the enemy,” said Hamed Jundiya, 63, an educational supervisor who erected his tent a few hundred yards from the border fence. Gazans are desperate, he said, “living without work, electricity and open borders.”

Another protester, Mohammad Obaid, 18, took a more militant stand, saying that holding a Palestinian flag in one hand and a rock in the other would be enough to get him killed by an Israeli soldier. “We can bring back our lands with the power of guns and weapons, not with a march, a stone or a knife,” he said.

With Gaza’s economy collapsing, fears of an explosive response have mounted. In recent years, first Egypt and then the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank joined Israel in squeezing Gaza financially.

Even before the protests started, Israel had started a campaign holding Hamas responsible for any violence. Israel’s hard-line defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, warned Gazans to keep away from the border in a post on Twitter written in Arabic.

“The Hamas leadership is risking your lives,” he wrote. “I advise you to get on with your normal everyday lives and not to participate in the provocation.”

The protest came at a particularly charged time, as Jews prepared for the start of the Passover holiday on Friday, and as Palestinians observed Land Day. The day commemorates the events of March 30, 1976, when Israeli security forces shot and killed six Arab citizens of Israel during protests over the state’s expropriation of Arab-owned land in northern Israel.

The Gaza protest is billed to reach its peak on May 15, when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or catastrophe, the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence and the 1948 war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes through flight and expulsion.

This year, May 15 is expected to be particularly explosive. It comes a day after the planned move of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a step that has provoked international criticism and Palestinian outrage, and it coincides with the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

Organizers of the border protest had hoped to create an almost festival-like atmosphere to attract families, setting up portable washrooms and providing free food, water and Wi-Fi.

But tensions in Gaza were building up for weeks. Palestinian militants have planted explosives along the border, and individuals have cut through the fence, some armed with knives and grenades, and set fire to Israeli military equipment, apparently testing Israeli preparedness and putting local communities on edge.

The protest feeds on Palestinian anger over the long blockade and the failing reconciliation process between Hamas and Fatah, the rival, mainstream movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Western-backed Palestinian Authority holds sway in parts of the West Bank.

Mr. Abbas, whose forces were routed from Gaza during factional violence in 2007, has vowed to tighten economic sanctions on the enclave, where most of the population lives in poverty and lacks such basics as regular electricity.

Hamas appeared eager to direct Gazan anger toward Israel.

“The memory of Land Day renews in our consciousness the power of blood, which bled like a waterfall to defend the land, and which erupted like a volcano in the face of the occupiers,” Hamas said in a statement.

Israel has fought three wars in Gaza over the past decade and has invested heavily in combating the threat posed by rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups, and from tunnels crossing under the border.

Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, described Hamas as “an organization in crisis” and accused its commanders of hiding behind women and children.

“This is not Scouts summer camp,” he said of the border encampment in a radio interview on Thursday. “It’s a battle zone.”

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9) Anatomy of a Los Angeles Police Shooting: A Black Teenager, a Missing Gun, Protests, Grief
By Tim Arango, March 30, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/us/los-angeles-police-shooting-anthony-weber.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Left, Anthony Weber’s memorial at the apartment complex where he was killed by the police. Right, a flower memorial for Anthony’s funeral. Kayla Reefer for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — John Weber was rummaging through old boxes the other day, looking for memories, when he found a bunch of old baseball and flag football trophies. He has kept other things, too, like a neatly pressed R.O.T.C. uniform, a reminder that he once hoped to steer his son, Anthony, to the Army and away from the streets.

“It’s all I’ve got left,” he said.

On Super Bowl Sunday, after rooting for the Patriots against the Eagles, Anthony Weber left a friend’s apartment to go for dinner with his girlfriend at The Kickin’ Crab, her favorite restaurant.

Around the same time, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department received a 911 call. A black man with a gun was threatening a motorist.

Soon, Anthony — a mixed race 16-year-old, was dead in a darkened courtyard of a run-down apartment complex, with no gun anywhere around.

Nearly two months later, with questions still unanswered, the spot is a makeshift memorial of candles, balloons, flowers, photographs, and placards from rallies. “Jail killer cops!” reads one. “No gun = no alibi = murder,” reads another.

Long before police shootings and protests in Ferguson, Mo., or Sacramento focused America’s attention on how the police treat black men, Los Angeles was a byword for police brutality and racism. Years of effort after the 1991 beating of Rodney King, the riots that followed, and later, the Rampart police corruption scandal, have succeeded in changing the culture of policing in the city to a great extent. There is less overt racism, many people in Los Angeles say, and police forces have been reshaped to better reflect the city’s diversity.

Yet to Anthony Weber’s family, to the Black Lives Matter activists drawn to the case, and to many residents of South Los Angeles, an area still rife with crime and poverty, his death and its aftermath are signs of how much more needs to change on their streets, and how the police can be too quick to use deadly force against black men.

“We are light-years from where we were, and light-years from where we need to be,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights lawyer who began suing the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1990s, and lately has worked with the department on new approaches to policing.

The neighborhood is not the South Los Angeles of the 1980s and 1990s, when gang wars and the crack epidemic were devastating many lives. Crime has fallen drastically, as it has in many big cities across America. There were more than 1,000 murders in a single year in the city of Los Angeles in the 1990s, but the rate today is less than 300 a year.

Even so, gangs are still ubiquitous, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has said that Anthony was involved with them, an allegation that has outraged activists.

“First they kill our bodies, then they kill our characters,” said Melina Abdullah, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and a Black Lives Matter organizer.

Anthony’s father said, “In South Central, everyone is associated with gangs — it’s just a part of being able to walk to school.” He said Anthony “associated” with neighborhood gang members but was “not a criminal gang member.”

By Mr. Weber’s own account, Anthony struggled. But his past, Mr. Weber said, was irrelevant to his killing.

Anthony’s mother, Demetra Johnson, said that her son “smoked and had a baby at 16,” but she maintained that “he was not a thug or killer, like they are trying to portray.”

She said she had always counseled her son, whom everyone called A.J., that on the streets, he would be regarded with suspicion by the police, especially if he was hanging out with a group of friends.

The sheriff’s department said that the deputies involved in the case believed Anthony had a gun, and that he had refused to obey an order to halt and had run away. When the deputies chased him, according to the department’s statement, Anthony “turned toward the deputies, and that was when a deputy-involved shooting occurred.”

No gun was found at the scene. The department said it must have been lost in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, possibly taken by a bystander.

“As you can imagine, until you are at one of these scenes, you don’t have an appreciation for just how chaotic they get, how dangerous potentially,” Sheriff Jim McDonnell told KPCC , a public radio station,about the deputies’ failure to find a gun. “You don’t know which additional threats are in the environment, either,” the sheriff said.

But witnesses and the family’s lawyer, Gregory A. Yates, say the deputies secured the scene immediately, and that no one else had any chance to get close and grab a dropped gun.

Activists and members of Anthony Weber’s family say they have no doubt where things will end up: exoneration for the deputies, the details fading from public memory, and eventually, perhaps after years, a quiet payout to the family from the county.

In Los Angeles, law enforcement officers are rarely held criminally accountable for shootings. The last time a police officer in the city faced criminal charges for a shooting while on duty was in 2000; the shooting was not fatal and the officer pleaded no contest.

The 2014 shooting of Ezell Ford, an unarmed black man, by the Los Angeles Police Department, galvanized the local chapter of Black Lives Matter, but the officers were not charged. Mr. Ford’s family sued the city and received a $1.5 million settlement last year.

An officer involved in another controversial police shooting was cleared this month. The district attorney’s office declined to bring chargesagainst the officer for killing an unarmed homeless man in the Venice neighborhood, even though the police department’s own investigationdetermined that the shooting was not justified and recommended criminal charges. The city reached a $4 million settlement with the victim’s family. Both the officer and victim were black.

The Venice case is emblematic of the broader frustrations of the Black Lives Matter movement over a lack of progress, despite national attention to the problem. “We’re absolutely frustrated,” Ms. Abdullah said. “I’m in a state of rage.”

Fatal shootings by police officers in the United States have held steady at roughly 1,000 a year over the last three years, according to a tally kept by The Washington Post. But there is no standardized federal database to track police shootings, despite repeated calls after the shooting in Ferguson to create such a system.

The latest incident to stir racial tensions and protests happened in Sacramento, where police officers shot and killed a young black man in his backyard who they thought was waving a gun. It turned out to be a cellphone.

Activists in Los Angeles say police shootings are still distressingly numerous. Last year, officers were involved in 78 shootings in Los Angeles County, down slightly from previous years, according to the Los Angeles district attorney. In New York, by comparison, there were 23 police shootings last year, the lowest total on record.

According to an investigation by KPCC, the public radio station, which pieced together data from a variety of sources, the number of shootings by law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County has remained roughly stable for the past 18 years. In the period from 2010 to 2014, the station found, 24 percent of the fatalities in those shootings were black, though black residents make up just 8 percent of the population.

Changes in police policy have built up “just enough fabric of trust to weather the shooting of a resident without a riot,” Ms. Rice said.

Anthony Weber’s death may not fit neatly into the familiar narrative of racially tinged police violence — of a white cop shooting a black man — but his case does fit the narrative of modern Los Angeles. Areas like South Los Angeles that were once predominantly African-American — and were the epicenter of uprisings against police abuses in 1965 and 1992 — have become increasingly Latino, and increasingly diverse. Anthony had a white father, a black mother and a Latino girlfriend.

Law enforcement in Los Angeles has also become more diverse: White males are now in the minority in both the police and the sheriff’s department, and Latino and black officers are represented on the force in proportions roughly mirroring the population at large.

But greater diversity has not ended longstanding police biases against black men, according to the shooting data as well as the perceptions of activists. “They shot him because he’s black!” was chanted by protesters at the first rally after Anthony Weber was killed.

“The last cop who put a boot in Rodney King’s face was black,” said Steven A. Lerman, a lawyer who represented Mr. King. “It doesn’t seem to be white versus black, but blue versus take-your-pick.”

The sheriff’s department has not disclosed the race or identity of the deputy who shot Anthony.

Sitting in the Weber family’s living room on a recent afternoon, surrounded by photographs of Anthony, were four generations of women. Mattie Johnson, Anthony’s grandmother, moved to Los Angeles in 1964 — a year before the Watts riots — hoping to escape the cruelties of segregation and racism in Birmingham, Ala. She recalled Ku Klux Klan marches and a church bombing there that killed four young black girls.

The women all considered Anthony’s death to be of a piece with the long arc of America’s history of racism.

If things had been different, Anthony Weber might have been the one behind the pulpit at the funeral the other day in South Los Angeles. He loved the music of the church, and he sure loved the spotlight.

“He was just a natural charmer,” said his mother, Demetra. “He wanted attention. Which could make him difficult, too. Trust me, I gave him attention. But he always wanted more.”

At his funeral, a former teacher called him her “wonder boy,” who worked hard to reach age 16. His sister spoke about the unfairness that “he never got the chance to be a man.”

Mixed with the grief and the music of R. Kelly and the O’Jays at the service, there were hints of anger, too.

“We’re having trouble finding out what happened to him,” his father said. “They’re not being transparent.”

Rodney Hilson, speaking from long experience as a pastor in South Los Angeles, said simply, “I’m tired of this.”

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10) New Trial Upheld for Adnan Syed of ‘Serial’
By LIAM STACKMARCH 29, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/us/adnan-syed-serial.html?rref=
collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=
us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=
1&pgtype=sectionfront

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Friday, March 30, 2018

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2018

"March For Our Lives" Photo Taken March 24, 2018 San Francisco Civic Center *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

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Cindy Sheehan and the Women's March on the Pentagon

A movement not just a protest

Different wings of the same warbird

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* Support Herman Bell

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Tell the Feds: End Draft Registration

Courage to Resist Podcast: The Future of Draft Registration in the United States

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Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

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GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 of America's Largest Corporations a $236B Tax Cut: Report

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A) EVENTS, ACTIONS AND ONGOING STRUGGLES

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"March For Our Lives" Photo Taken March 24, 2018 San Francisco Civic Center

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